—— An Arduous Battle ——79And, feeling that the main objective was achieved – the enemy
trenches were in our hands – the troops tore after the commander.
Leaping over the parapet of the last trench, we ended up in a flat
field covered by a metre of snow. Surprised at the unexpected
silence and unable to see ahead of us either the enemy or our own
neighbouring forces to left or right, the platoon pressed on towards
the snowcovered heights, galvanised by the company commander.
The others began to finish off the Nazis who had retreated into
their dugouts. There were dead Nazis lying in awkward poses all
over the place. There were a lot of them.
Restoring order in the occupied trenches, the rest of the company
followed its commander and also ended up in the snowy field, ready
to strike at the enemy rear. But at this point the Germans, who had
come to their senses, launched defensive fire. They directed mortars
and artillery at their former trenches and dugouts.
‘Forward! Everyone, forward! Don’t stick around. Get out of
the firing range!’ shouted Lieutenant Butorin, leading the men
farther and farther away. But there was no quick way of getting to
the little hills that offered salvation; the snow was too deep. Just
as if they were bound by ropes, our legs could barely move in the
snowy mass. On top of that there turned out to be ice under the
snow! Two or three shells dropped on this snowy plain and threw
up fountains of water mixed with ice and fragments from the
shells themselves.
With a single grenade and pistol I ran alongside the company
commander. Ten metres away from us Filatov, the big strapping
Siberian lad from the next platoon, was running with a DP
machine gun at the ready, gamely ploughing his way through the
snow. Behind us there were ten to fifteen troops advancing.
‘Hey, we’re looking a bit low on numbers!’ I thought, glancing
at our rows of soldiers, which were thinning with every passing
minute. ‘What’s the company commander going to take on now?
What are we going to do next?’
And, indeed, what could we do? We had fulfilled our objective,
even done a little bit more than that – ended up on the third line of