Post by LUDMILA ILYUKHIN on May 23, 2011 2:14:53 GMT 1
“I want to go fight!”
The year was 1918. Ludmila had been out of the Winter Palace for a year now, and had been living with her adoptive father Antonov Ilyukhin in his small Moscow apartment. Everything was new and thrilling, and she was discovering the world under an entirely different light. She had discovered History, and had also discovered that the world was round and enormous, and that it was divided into many different sections called “nations”. She had discovered that she lived in a country called Russia, and that its king (the Czar) had been ousted by his people and the Bolshevik Party. She wasn’t too sure what a political party was, but from Antonov had told her, it was a very important thing.
She had been very enthusiastic about learning the Cyrillic alphabet, although mathematics still evaded her. She’d also shown a lot of interest about the Party’s activities, its different personalities and its goals. Antonov had given her a rather detailed view of Communism, and Ludmila had immediately been swept up by its egalitarian ideals and its struggle against oppression. She wanted to fight beside the worker and the peasant against their Capitalist overlords (even though she had a very vague understanding of what a Capitalist was), and she always pestered her father to tell her about what the Party had talked about when he came back from meetings.
The drums of war were also rumbling noisily around Moscow, and that fascinated Ludmila. The concept of armed struggle between large numbers of people was a new concept for her, and the fact that the war described in the pages of Pravda was between the heroic forces of the Bolsheviks, the peasants and the workers and the hateful Whites and their foreign Capitalist allies gave the whole thing an almost Biblical ring to it. She avidly read reports about the war, asking her father to bring her Pravda every day. Every day her imagination ran wild with scenes of war against pale white monsters. She saw herself standing atop a hill, red banner in hand, staring defiantly at the enemy as he cowered in his trenches and redoubts. Again and again she had asked her father to let her enlist, but he always said no.
“-Ludmila, my dear”, said her father, putting down the book he was reading. “You are not going to fight out there. You belong here, in Moscow, where it’s safe.”
“-But the revolution needs anyone capable of fighting! It’s a matter of life and death!”, exclaimed Ludmila passionately.
“-War is a terrible and terrifying adventure, Mila”, said Antonov with a frown.
Adventure! Ludmila’s eyes gleamed at the prospect.
“-Papa! I want to fight for the revolution!”, she said. “I don’t want to sit here while our comrades fight on the front. I feel useless!”
“-There are other ways of building Communism, Mila, not just shooting at the enemy.”
“-Hmph”, said Ludmila before sitting down on the old creaky sofa they had. As her father went back to reading, she began to think. If her father didn’t want her to go, then she’d find another way to go. And with that in mind, she began to devise a plan…
A couple of weeks later, Antonov knocked on the door of his apartment. He had just come back from the store with some bread and vegetables, meagre rations, but better than nothing considering how everything was in short supply due to the hardships brought about by the ongoing civil war. Ludmila, who always accompanied him to the shops, had decided to stay at home, complaining about a terrible headache. He had bought some aspirin from the chemist’s for her, and expected her to come answer the door.
She didn’t.
“How strange”, he said before unlocking the door and stepping into the flat. The apartment was perfectly quiet.
“Ludmila?”, he called. “I got some aspiring for you.”
No answer. Maybe she was asleep? Antonov closed the door behind him and went to Ludmila’s room, which was little more than a large cupboard in the wall. Antonov slept on the sofa.
“Mila?”, he said, softly knocking on the door. He received no answer. Worried, he pushed the door open and was horrified to find the bed empty. The apartment was small, with only a small entrance corridor, a living room and Mila’s room.
“Oh God no, where are you?”, he said, worry and fear becoming apparent in his voice. Suddenly, he spotted a note on the table in the living room. He rushed to the table and snatched the note up, and his heart sank when he recognised Ludmila’s clumsy hand-writing. The note was short and read as follows:
Dear Papa,
I have decided to pack a few things and go join the Red Army. Please do not think it’s because I don’t love you any more, because I still do! I just want to do something for the revolution.
Love, Ludmila.
Antonov dropped the note. He felt limp.
“Oh…Mila…you foolish girl. What have you done?”
Well, war definitely wasn’t clean or comfortable. When Ludmila had gone to the nearest recruiting station, she had expected some friendliness from the recruiters, however, all she got was some impatient questions about her name and her family before she was told to go to the back. There, she sat with a bunch of tired-looking young men who had not deigned talk to her. After that, they’d been driven via truck to a training camp several miles outside Moscow where they had been taught to crawl, jump, shoot and stand very stiffly and very still by very shouty men. She’d been given a grubby uniform, some worn leather boots and a rifle with a bayonet, and after a week of training, she had been put in a female battalion before being sent out to the front.
The first half of the journey had been via train, but a bomb had destroyed the tracks, so they had been forced to get out and walk. Ludmila had never walked for as long or as far as this, and when they had stopped to make camp by the side of the road, she collapsed onto her back in exhaustion. The commissar had shouted at her till she got back up, and then she’d been assigned to sentry duty as punishment. After a terrible night spent trying to sleep on the hard ground, they had packed their stuff up and continued their march. After two days of incessant shouting, kicking and marching, they’d finally arrived at the front. They were several miles North of Rostov, close to the river Don, and Ludmila enthusiasm returned as they neared the front. Finally! She would soon be fighting the enemy of the people.
As they neared the front, the scenery changed somewhat. Here and there were large holes in the ground, and rusted coils of barbed wire could be seen lining the remains of abandoned trenches and fortifications. Suddenly, Ludmila’s nose was assailed by a ghastly smell, and she looked around for the source of it. Her eyes eventually found what appeared to be a white horse hanging limply from a tree. What on Earth was it doing in a tree?
And then she noticed that the horse didn’t have a rear end. Where its rear end and legs were meant to be, there was nothing, just a bloody mess with horrible coils of some pink something drooping out of it. She felt sick.
“Shit, I feel sorry for the horses”, said a tired voice nearby. “It’s not their war and they’re getting shot and blown up all over the place.”
Ludmila looked around and saw a dark-haired woman gazing darkly at the horse’s corpse. She looked tired, and was rather portly in appearance.
“-Why did they…kill the horse?”, asked Ludmila, fighting to stop herself from retching.
“-Bah, an accident. Horses help carry things, like officers and ammunition. When the enemy shoots, horses get hit. This one probably got hit by artillery.”
“-Oh…”, said Ludmila faintly. She swallowed with difficulty, before the commissar suddenly gave the order to move. Ludmila was relieved, but her relief was short lived as yet more horrors lay ahead. The column passed bodies lying immobile under a grubby tarpaulin. Ludmila knew they weren’t sleeping. She also saw men limp past, their injuries hastily bandaged and their eyes seemingly staring off into eternity.
Finally, they stopped. Ludmila dropped her pack heavily and sat on it. They were at the back of a shallow trench that overlooked a large expanse of stepped pocked with craters and what appeared to be dead bodies here and there. Ludmila gazed intently into the distance for any sign of the enemy, but found none.
“Where’s the enemy?”, she asked. The portly woman next to her answered flatly:
“-Oh, you won’t see him much. He’s hiding. Showing yourself round these parts will get you killed. Snipers and everything.”
“-Oh…”, said Ludmila, somewhat disappointed. She was tired, hungry and stiff and was beginning to regret having enlisted. Maybe her father had been right? No, no. She would not, could not, come back on her decision. Besides, the revolution needed her.
And then began a strange waiting game. Ludmila and her battalion simply sat and waited, eating poor rations cooked over half-hearted fires, sleeping badly and doing sentry duty. Ludmila began to like sentry duty, as she usually did it with the portly woman, whose name was Olga. Olga came from the Ukraine, and her tales of Anarchists, Germans and the vast plains of her country fascinated Ludmila. Olga had joined after her “fool of a husband” had got himself killed in the Urals. One night, as Ludmila and Olga talked quietly and smoked the horrendous cigarettes the Ukrainian woman made out of newspaper and scraps of tobacco. Tobacco was a new thing to Ludmila. It tasted horrible and burned her lungs the first time, but the more she smoked, the easier it became. She was also beginning to find the sensation of inhaling the thick and acrid smoke to be quite pleasant.
Occasionally, shots rang out in the all round silence of the area they were in. Sometimes a machine-gun chattered, sometimes a single rifle shot sounded like a whip crack. At one point it rained, and Ludmila was forced to wade through mud that came up to her ankles for several days. At one point, she got sick and was forced to rush into the woods every now and again to vomit. But despite all this, there was still no sign of any fighting.
And then one day it came. Unannounced and sudden, it took everyone by surprised. The first shells began to fall as Ludmila was eating lunch, and the massive tremor caused by the exploding shells knocked her battered canteen out of her hands. Olga was quick to react as the alarm sounded.
“-Get down, fool woman!”, she said before shoving Ludmila down onto the ground. More and more shells fell, some exploding only a few metres away from where the two women were. Ludmila heard screams above the din, and soon, she felt a familiar sensation: terror. She stared around her, her eyes wide. The bombardment seemed to go on forever, and soon, Ludmila got the impression that it had always been this way, and that her ears had always been filled with the thunder of cannons and the screams of the dying.
And then it stopped. Ludmila lay on the ground for a while before gingerly standing up. Olga was already up and had her rifle with her.
“Fifteen minute bombardment? Damn. The Don Cossacks must have got a shipment from the Whites up North.”
“-Wha…wha…”, said Ludmila, shaken beyond belief. Olga picked up the Rusalka’s rifle and shoved it unceremoniously into her trembling hands.
“-Brace yourself, devotchka. The enemy will be coming soon.”
Instead of excitement, Ludmila only felt fear and dread. Would the attack be as terrible as the bombardment? She didn’t have much time to think about it, as a bullet suddenly whizzed past her head and smacked into a mound of earth beyond.
“Here they come!”, said Olga. Ludmila dropped behind cover as more bullets flew past like invisible, deadly insects. Shouts and orders came from all around her, and then she heard the commissar.
“-Rally, you dogs! Give them hell!”
Ludmila glanced quickly out from the trench (or rather what was left of it) and her eyes widened. She saw men, hundreds of them, thousands, millions, billions crossing the empty expanse separating her from their positions. They came on without stopping, even with the shots coming from the Red lines. A sharp detonation next to her indicated that Olga was shooting too. Ludmila took her rifle and held it in the same way she had been taught back at boot camp. She shakily took aim and fired, the gun bucking violently against her shoulder. She closed her eyes as the detonation deafened her. Regardless of whether or not she’d hit someone, she reloaded and fired again, keeping her eyes open this time. The man she was aiming at threw his arms and rifle up in the air and fell. Had she killed him? She had no idea. A bullet smacked into the earth in front of her and sent dirt into her eyes.
“-Fuck!”, swore Olga. “Bayonet! Bayonet!”
A machine-gun chattered from their side and Ludmila saw about ten men fall, their flesh torn apart by the cruel bullets of the weapon. Shakily she did as Olga told her and fixed her bayonet to the barrel of her gun. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to try twice before the bayonet slotted into place.
And then, the enemy was in the shallow cut in the ground the Reds called a trench. There were shouts, a scream, a clang of metal on metal. Ludmila looked wildly around her, her eyes wide with fear, and then a soldier appeared beside her. He yelled and stabbed at her with his bayonet, and Ludmila was barely able to dodge. She yelled back, partly in terror and partly to give herself courage, smashed the butt of her rifle down on the man'’ arms. The man stumbled, and then Ludmila drove her bayonet into his back.
She struggled to get the blade out of the man’s body. Olga break a man’s skull with the butt of her rifle, and the commissar shot another one in the gut with his revolver. With a desperate heave, Ludmila finally extracted her bayonet from her victim, just in time to fend off the attack of another soldier, who was wielding a strange curved sword.
Ludmila threw herself aside, avoiding the deadly blade. She then rolled onto her back and stabbed upwards, driving her bayonet into her attacker’s belly. The man screamed and fell on top of her, and Ludmila quickly shoved him off her, her face distorted into a grimace of fear. As she stood up, she was hit in the face and fell. A soldier stood over her, his rifle raised to club her to death, but the Rusalka was faster, and shot him in the face.
Suddenly, there was a lull in the cries around her, and as Ludmila stood up, she saw that the enemy was retreating. Cheers came from her own side, and she joined in, her voice hoarse and tired. She’d killed for the first time today. She had the blood of her enemies on her uniform, and her bayonet was slick with it. She felt exhilarated at still being alive, and sick at the horror she’d been through.
And so went Ludmila’s first battle.
Several months went past. Ludmila took part in yet more battles, survived yet more bombardments. And then she took part in a failed offensive where half her battalion was killed. Amazingly, all she received during that assault was a bruised hip after she tripped and fell. Ludmila also took part in a retreat, and a counter-offensive during which she participated in a night assault on the enemy’s flank. Olga was killed in the next offensive, cut down with three others by machine-gun fire. Ludmila was deeply saddened by Olga’s death, as she had been a good and reliable friend in the midst of all the carnage. She wept bitterly for several days after her friend’s death.
And then one day, as Ludmila was peeling a potato she’d stolen from a neighbouring farm, she was thrown into the air amidst a monstrous explosion of sound. Dazed and lying in the dirt, she realised she’d been hit by artillery. One lone shell, lobbed at their positions like an insult or a taunt, and it had hit her, or all people. She felt pain in her right arm and on her forehead, and she also felt blood. Was it the end…? She vaguely saw a few blurry silhouettes nearby. Her ears were ringing like crazy dinner bells, or the bells of St Basil’s Cathedral back home in Moscow. Suddenly, she heard someone shout:
“Hey! She’s alive! Get her on the stretcher!”
A few months later, after spending several weeks in a field hospital, and several more weeks in another hospital in Moscow, Ludmila was let off. Amazingly, she had only suffered shrapnel cuts, a broken arm and a gash on her forehead.
She arrived in the street where her father lived in the early evening, having travelled there by cart. Her arm was in a sling, and one of her eyes was partially obscured by a thick bandage over part of her forehead. As the cart left, she slowly made her way towards the door of the building where she and her father lived. The street seemed more drab since she’d left, and the building itself looked run down and old. She went up the stairs with difficulty, and hesitated before knocking on the door. She waited for a few minutes before she heard steps on the other side, and finally, her father himself opened the door.
“Papa?”, she said. Her father stared wordlessly at her for what seemed like an eternity before throwing his arms around her. Ludmila winced at the sudden pain this brought to her arm, but was otherwise happy. It was over. She had survived and had returned somewhat safe and sound to her father.
“-Oh, Mila! What were you thinking? Look at you!”, said her father.
“-I’m sorry, papa. I’m so sorry…”
That night, as Ludmila slept in her old bed, her dreams were filled with the sound of machine-guns and explosions. Again and again she saw Olga falling to the ground, wet red stains growing wider on her chest. She heard the commissar shouting at her, and again she saw the faces of those she’d killed. She slept badly for weeks, waking up in the middle of the night sweating and reaching for a weapon she knew was not there.
Her wish had been fulfilled. She had seen the ugly face of War, and her life was thus changed forever.
The year was 1918. Ludmila had been out of the Winter Palace for a year now, and had been living with her adoptive father Antonov Ilyukhin in his small Moscow apartment. Everything was new and thrilling, and she was discovering the world under an entirely different light. She had discovered History, and had also discovered that the world was round and enormous, and that it was divided into many different sections called “nations”. She had discovered that she lived in a country called Russia, and that its king (the Czar) had been ousted by his people and the Bolshevik Party. She wasn’t too sure what a political party was, but from Antonov had told her, it was a very important thing.
She had been very enthusiastic about learning the Cyrillic alphabet, although mathematics still evaded her. She’d also shown a lot of interest about the Party’s activities, its different personalities and its goals. Antonov had given her a rather detailed view of Communism, and Ludmila had immediately been swept up by its egalitarian ideals and its struggle against oppression. She wanted to fight beside the worker and the peasant against their Capitalist overlords (even though she had a very vague understanding of what a Capitalist was), and she always pestered her father to tell her about what the Party had talked about when he came back from meetings.
The drums of war were also rumbling noisily around Moscow, and that fascinated Ludmila. The concept of armed struggle between large numbers of people was a new concept for her, and the fact that the war described in the pages of Pravda was between the heroic forces of the Bolsheviks, the peasants and the workers and the hateful Whites and their foreign Capitalist allies gave the whole thing an almost Biblical ring to it. She avidly read reports about the war, asking her father to bring her Pravda every day. Every day her imagination ran wild with scenes of war against pale white monsters. She saw herself standing atop a hill, red banner in hand, staring defiantly at the enemy as he cowered in his trenches and redoubts. Again and again she had asked her father to let her enlist, but he always said no.
“-Ludmila, my dear”, said her father, putting down the book he was reading. “You are not going to fight out there. You belong here, in Moscow, where it’s safe.”
“-But the revolution needs anyone capable of fighting! It’s a matter of life and death!”, exclaimed Ludmila passionately.
“-War is a terrible and terrifying adventure, Mila”, said Antonov with a frown.
Adventure! Ludmila’s eyes gleamed at the prospect.
“-Papa! I want to fight for the revolution!”, she said. “I don’t want to sit here while our comrades fight on the front. I feel useless!”
“-There are other ways of building Communism, Mila, not just shooting at the enemy.”
“-Hmph”, said Ludmila before sitting down on the old creaky sofa they had. As her father went back to reading, she began to think. If her father didn’t want her to go, then she’d find another way to go. And with that in mind, she began to devise a plan…
A couple of weeks later, Antonov knocked on the door of his apartment. He had just come back from the store with some bread and vegetables, meagre rations, but better than nothing considering how everything was in short supply due to the hardships brought about by the ongoing civil war. Ludmila, who always accompanied him to the shops, had decided to stay at home, complaining about a terrible headache. He had bought some aspirin from the chemist’s for her, and expected her to come answer the door.
She didn’t.
“How strange”, he said before unlocking the door and stepping into the flat. The apartment was perfectly quiet.
“Ludmila?”, he called. “I got some aspiring for you.”
No answer. Maybe she was asleep? Antonov closed the door behind him and went to Ludmila’s room, which was little more than a large cupboard in the wall. Antonov slept on the sofa.
“Mila?”, he said, softly knocking on the door. He received no answer. Worried, he pushed the door open and was horrified to find the bed empty. The apartment was small, with only a small entrance corridor, a living room and Mila’s room.
“Oh God no, where are you?”, he said, worry and fear becoming apparent in his voice. Suddenly, he spotted a note on the table in the living room. He rushed to the table and snatched the note up, and his heart sank when he recognised Ludmila’s clumsy hand-writing. The note was short and read as follows:
Dear Papa,
I have decided to pack a few things and go join the Red Army. Please do not think it’s because I don’t love you any more, because I still do! I just want to do something for the revolution.
Love, Ludmila.
Antonov dropped the note. He felt limp.
“Oh…Mila…you foolish girl. What have you done?”
Well, war definitely wasn’t clean or comfortable. When Ludmila had gone to the nearest recruiting station, she had expected some friendliness from the recruiters, however, all she got was some impatient questions about her name and her family before she was told to go to the back. There, she sat with a bunch of tired-looking young men who had not deigned talk to her. After that, they’d been driven via truck to a training camp several miles outside Moscow where they had been taught to crawl, jump, shoot and stand very stiffly and very still by very shouty men. She’d been given a grubby uniform, some worn leather boots and a rifle with a bayonet, and after a week of training, she had been put in a female battalion before being sent out to the front.
The first half of the journey had been via train, but a bomb had destroyed the tracks, so they had been forced to get out and walk. Ludmila had never walked for as long or as far as this, and when they had stopped to make camp by the side of the road, she collapsed onto her back in exhaustion. The commissar had shouted at her till she got back up, and then she’d been assigned to sentry duty as punishment. After a terrible night spent trying to sleep on the hard ground, they had packed their stuff up and continued their march. After two days of incessant shouting, kicking and marching, they’d finally arrived at the front. They were several miles North of Rostov, close to the river Don, and Ludmila enthusiasm returned as they neared the front. Finally! She would soon be fighting the enemy of the people.
As they neared the front, the scenery changed somewhat. Here and there were large holes in the ground, and rusted coils of barbed wire could be seen lining the remains of abandoned trenches and fortifications. Suddenly, Ludmila’s nose was assailed by a ghastly smell, and she looked around for the source of it. Her eyes eventually found what appeared to be a white horse hanging limply from a tree. What on Earth was it doing in a tree?
And then she noticed that the horse didn’t have a rear end. Where its rear end and legs were meant to be, there was nothing, just a bloody mess with horrible coils of some pink something drooping out of it. She felt sick.
“Shit, I feel sorry for the horses”, said a tired voice nearby. “It’s not their war and they’re getting shot and blown up all over the place.”
Ludmila looked around and saw a dark-haired woman gazing darkly at the horse’s corpse. She looked tired, and was rather portly in appearance.
“-Why did they…kill the horse?”, asked Ludmila, fighting to stop herself from retching.
“-Bah, an accident. Horses help carry things, like officers and ammunition. When the enemy shoots, horses get hit. This one probably got hit by artillery.”
“-Oh…”, said Ludmila faintly. She swallowed with difficulty, before the commissar suddenly gave the order to move. Ludmila was relieved, but her relief was short lived as yet more horrors lay ahead. The column passed bodies lying immobile under a grubby tarpaulin. Ludmila knew they weren’t sleeping. She also saw men limp past, their injuries hastily bandaged and their eyes seemingly staring off into eternity.
Finally, they stopped. Ludmila dropped her pack heavily and sat on it. They were at the back of a shallow trench that overlooked a large expanse of stepped pocked with craters and what appeared to be dead bodies here and there. Ludmila gazed intently into the distance for any sign of the enemy, but found none.
“Where’s the enemy?”, she asked. The portly woman next to her answered flatly:
“-Oh, you won’t see him much. He’s hiding. Showing yourself round these parts will get you killed. Snipers and everything.”
“-Oh…”, said Ludmila, somewhat disappointed. She was tired, hungry and stiff and was beginning to regret having enlisted. Maybe her father had been right? No, no. She would not, could not, come back on her decision. Besides, the revolution needed her.
And then began a strange waiting game. Ludmila and her battalion simply sat and waited, eating poor rations cooked over half-hearted fires, sleeping badly and doing sentry duty. Ludmila began to like sentry duty, as she usually did it with the portly woman, whose name was Olga. Olga came from the Ukraine, and her tales of Anarchists, Germans and the vast plains of her country fascinated Ludmila. Olga had joined after her “fool of a husband” had got himself killed in the Urals. One night, as Ludmila and Olga talked quietly and smoked the horrendous cigarettes the Ukrainian woman made out of newspaper and scraps of tobacco. Tobacco was a new thing to Ludmila. It tasted horrible and burned her lungs the first time, but the more she smoked, the easier it became. She was also beginning to find the sensation of inhaling the thick and acrid smoke to be quite pleasant.
Occasionally, shots rang out in the all round silence of the area they were in. Sometimes a machine-gun chattered, sometimes a single rifle shot sounded like a whip crack. At one point it rained, and Ludmila was forced to wade through mud that came up to her ankles for several days. At one point, she got sick and was forced to rush into the woods every now and again to vomit. But despite all this, there was still no sign of any fighting.
And then one day it came. Unannounced and sudden, it took everyone by surprised. The first shells began to fall as Ludmila was eating lunch, and the massive tremor caused by the exploding shells knocked her battered canteen out of her hands. Olga was quick to react as the alarm sounded.
“-Get down, fool woman!”, she said before shoving Ludmila down onto the ground. More and more shells fell, some exploding only a few metres away from where the two women were. Ludmila heard screams above the din, and soon, she felt a familiar sensation: terror. She stared around her, her eyes wide. The bombardment seemed to go on forever, and soon, Ludmila got the impression that it had always been this way, and that her ears had always been filled with the thunder of cannons and the screams of the dying.
And then it stopped. Ludmila lay on the ground for a while before gingerly standing up. Olga was already up and had her rifle with her.
“Fifteen minute bombardment? Damn. The Don Cossacks must have got a shipment from the Whites up North.”
“-Wha…wha…”, said Ludmila, shaken beyond belief. Olga picked up the Rusalka’s rifle and shoved it unceremoniously into her trembling hands.
“-Brace yourself, devotchka. The enemy will be coming soon.”
Instead of excitement, Ludmila only felt fear and dread. Would the attack be as terrible as the bombardment? She didn’t have much time to think about it, as a bullet suddenly whizzed past her head and smacked into a mound of earth beyond.
“Here they come!”, said Olga. Ludmila dropped behind cover as more bullets flew past like invisible, deadly insects. Shouts and orders came from all around her, and then she heard the commissar.
“-Rally, you dogs! Give them hell!”
Ludmila glanced quickly out from the trench (or rather what was left of it) and her eyes widened. She saw men, hundreds of them, thousands, millions, billions crossing the empty expanse separating her from their positions. They came on without stopping, even with the shots coming from the Red lines. A sharp detonation next to her indicated that Olga was shooting too. Ludmila took her rifle and held it in the same way she had been taught back at boot camp. She shakily took aim and fired, the gun bucking violently against her shoulder. She closed her eyes as the detonation deafened her. Regardless of whether or not she’d hit someone, she reloaded and fired again, keeping her eyes open this time. The man she was aiming at threw his arms and rifle up in the air and fell. Had she killed him? She had no idea. A bullet smacked into the earth in front of her and sent dirt into her eyes.
“-Fuck!”, swore Olga. “Bayonet! Bayonet!”
A machine-gun chattered from their side and Ludmila saw about ten men fall, their flesh torn apart by the cruel bullets of the weapon. Shakily she did as Olga told her and fixed her bayonet to the barrel of her gun. Her hands were shaking so badly that she had to try twice before the bayonet slotted into place.
And then, the enemy was in the shallow cut in the ground the Reds called a trench. There were shouts, a scream, a clang of metal on metal. Ludmila looked wildly around her, her eyes wide with fear, and then a soldier appeared beside her. He yelled and stabbed at her with his bayonet, and Ludmila was barely able to dodge. She yelled back, partly in terror and partly to give herself courage, smashed the butt of her rifle down on the man'’ arms. The man stumbled, and then Ludmila drove her bayonet into his back.
She struggled to get the blade out of the man’s body. Olga break a man’s skull with the butt of her rifle, and the commissar shot another one in the gut with his revolver. With a desperate heave, Ludmila finally extracted her bayonet from her victim, just in time to fend off the attack of another soldier, who was wielding a strange curved sword.
Ludmila threw herself aside, avoiding the deadly blade. She then rolled onto her back and stabbed upwards, driving her bayonet into her attacker’s belly. The man screamed and fell on top of her, and Ludmila quickly shoved him off her, her face distorted into a grimace of fear. As she stood up, she was hit in the face and fell. A soldier stood over her, his rifle raised to club her to death, but the Rusalka was faster, and shot him in the face.
Suddenly, there was a lull in the cries around her, and as Ludmila stood up, she saw that the enemy was retreating. Cheers came from her own side, and she joined in, her voice hoarse and tired. She’d killed for the first time today. She had the blood of her enemies on her uniform, and her bayonet was slick with it. She felt exhilarated at still being alive, and sick at the horror she’d been through.
And so went Ludmila’s first battle.
Several months went past. Ludmila took part in yet more battles, survived yet more bombardments. And then she took part in a failed offensive where half her battalion was killed. Amazingly, all she received during that assault was a bruised hip after she tripped and fell. Ludmila also took part in a retreat, and a counter-offensive during which she participated in a night assault on the enemy’s flank. Olga was killed in the next offensive, cut down with three others by machine-gun fire. Ludmila was deeply saddened by Olga’s death, as she had been a good and reliable friend in the midst of all the carnage. She wept bitterly for several days after her friend’s death.
And then one day, as Ludmila was peeling a potato she’d stolen from a neighbouring farm, she was thrown into the air amidst a monstrous explosion of sound. Dazed and lying in the dirt, she realised she’d been hit by artillery. One lone shell, lobbed at their positions like an insult or a taunt, and it had hit her, or all people. She felt pain in her right arm and on her forehead, and she also felt blood. Was it the end…? She vaguely saw a few blurry silhouettes nearby. Her ears were ringing like crazy dinner bells, or the bells of St Basil’s Cathedral back home in Moscow. Suddenly, she heard someone shout:
“Hey! She’s alive! Get her on the stretcher!”
A few months later, after spending several weeks in a field hospital, and several more weeks in another hospital in Moscow, Ludmila was let off. Amazingly, she had only suffered shrapnel cuts, a broken arm and a gash on her forehead.
She arrived in the street where her father lived in the early evening, having travelled there by cart. Her arm was in a sling, and one of her eyes was partially obscured by a thick bandage over part of her forehead. As the cart left, she slowly made her way towards the door of the building where she and her father lived. The street seemed more drab since she’d left, and the building itself looked run down and old. She went up the stairs with difficulty, and hesitated before knocking on the door. She waited for a few minutes before she heard steps on the other side, and finally, her father himself opened the door.
“Papa?”, she said. Her father stared wordlessly at her for what seemed like an eternity before throwing his arms around her. Ludmila winced at the sudden pain this brought to her arm, but was otherwise happy. It was over. She had survived and had returned somewhat safe and sound to her father.
“-Oh, Mila! What were you thinking? Look at you!”, said her father.
“-I’m sorry, papa. I’m so sorry…”
That night, as Ludmila slept in her old bed, her dreams were filled with the sound of machine-guns and explosions. Again and again she saw Olga falling to the ground, wet red stains growing wider on her chest. She heard the commissar shouting at her, and again she saw the faces of those she’d killed. She slept badly for weeks, waking up in the middle of the night sweating and reaching for a weapon she knew was not there.
Her wish had been fulfilled. She had seen the ugly face of War, and her life was thus changed forever.
