In the summer of 1941, I worked as a day laborer on a sovkhoz. I had just turned 19. We were growing millet. To be honest, the poverty there was extreme, but I can’t say we had it really bad. There was certainly no luxury. But that didn’t matter. We were out in the fresh air, there was fresh milk every day, the girls were pretty, and the work, well, it wasn’t too bad, you got used to it. So that summer, in June, the Germans invaded. Everyone panicked. Everything was chaos. Irina, the neighbor, wouldn’t leave her house anymore. She spent all her time praying. She thought, I believe, that the Germans were specifically after her.

I was called up. My mother was in tears. Father had long been dead by then, perished from his old wound. The Whites had given it to him. Not that he was a Red himself. No, simply because he wouldn’t say where he had hidden the potatoes. They left him to die in our barn. He bled like a pig. But he lived long enough to marry my mother. The whole village thought she was crazy, marrying Sasja Samovar. You had to be out of your mind. But she did it, and then I came along, Joeri, the son of Sasja Samovar. Just nineteen and called up to the front. Mother gave me bread and, even better, a big piece of sausage, all wrapped up in a handkerchief, spice cakes, and of course a supply of vodka. That’s a lot for a woman who kept herself warm by burning manure and had to keep the cows inside at night to keep it a bit warm. Well, I kissed my crying mother goodbye, right on the forehead, and then I slapped my sister because she considered my chances of survival as nil. Very difficult character, my sister. And a tongue!

The morning I left, before my eyes were even half open, she said to me, “Joeri, you stupid fool, you’re going to get yourself shot by some plump, pudgy German. Mark my words. If I were you, I’d run off into the woods, because you won’t come back alive from the front. Not that I care.” But when I stood in line with the other boys from the village, she did wipe away a tear. So, she did have a tiny bit of feeling, that scoundrel. Then it was marching and being yelled at and marching and being yelled at. Until we arrived at the station and got on the train. Quite an experience. That train. Barely picked up speed, stopped every hour for no apparent reason, and our officers kept swearing. I had my own thoughts, munched on the sausage, and to my great disappointment, I noticed that I no longer had the spice cakes. Stolen or just lost.

Who knows? I was already quite tipsy. Yeah, I didn’t see vodka every day. I felt the warmth of the alcohol flow through me and went to sleep. I slept through the whole trip. I was a deep sleeper. A big advantage in wartime. Because you wouldn’t think it, from photos and books it always looks like an adventure, but often war is just really boring. You have nothing to do unless you go foraging to supplement your meager rations or play cards, but I did neither. If I found some food, there was always a smarter guy who somehow managed to take it from me, and as for cards, the same thing, because they played for money, and where was I supposed to get money from? Oh, I didn’t complain. We got oatmeal every day, our supply chief had plenty of oatmeal. He had made a deal with a big shot—or so it was said—and so we were well off.

The whole war, oatmeal. Until we were sick of it. But it didn’t bother me, because oatmeal happens to be my favorite dish. On the sovkhoz, we saw it maybe once a month, so I was quite content with the infantry. That means a lot of marching, because after those first three weeks, I didn’t see the inside of a train again. No, sir, marching all the way to the Oder, until the Germans finally got me. My sister was wrong. It was a minor wound, a real winner, the doctor said. I never got a prize, and when I got to go home, I didn’t ask about it. In those days, you had to watch what you said. Because one wrong word could get you in trouble. Then you’d be assigned to a penal company. You could go ahead as if there were mines, and there were always mines, the Germans left them behind like horses leave droppings. Very meticulous, methodical guys, those Germans, but we gave them a hard time. Not at first. Then it was the other way around.

That’s because they started first. What an idea to do something like that in the middle of summer! It was terribly hot. If you were without water for two hours, you could be swept away. And every day up early and marching. At first mostly the wrong way, towards Moscow. Our officers got really on edge. I never quite understood it. Fighting is fighting, right? In Moscow, just the same as in Kiev, Kharkov, or Rostov-on-Don. Or am I wrong? Anyway, I marched, did what I was told. Shoot at anything that moves. Couldn’t be clearer. If something moved, shoot it. Turned out I was pretty good with a gun. For instance, if there were scouts sneaking around us. Very annoying, those scouts. Came to check everything out, took their time, lay in the grass peeking, quickly scribbled a note to General So-and-so, and before you knew it, you had three regiments of Germans on your back, and first a nice load of lead from their artillery on your head. And if things really went bad, a Messerschmitt would fly over, and nine times out of ten, you could forget it.

So when there were scouts around again, our platoon commander would say, “That’s a job for Joerotsjka. Get Joerotsjka, he’ll shoot them dead.” And then they’d bring me, and I’d put a bullet in their guts. No problem. It was a bit like shooting squirrels. We often did that at home. Only these squirrels also had guns. Didn’t matter to me. Bang and those sneaky rats were gone. Not that I had anything against Germans personally. I never knew a German. So maybe they’re really nice guys. But the newspaper said otherwise, and so did the leaflets. No idea.

What I do know is that every time the platoon commander called me, and I made the moving dots he pointed out fly with their legs in the air, I got a good shot of vodka. Really cheered you up. Especially in winter, because of course it didn’t stay summer. So that’s how it went, a lot of marching, oatmeal every day, and occasionally some extra vodka. Then Vadim joined us. Same age as me, but Vadim was a smart guy. Had been to university, but now was voluntarily with us. Nicest guy in the whole regiment and a great storyteller. About anything. He had something to say about everything. A real asset. Everyone hung on his every word. I most of all.

The poems he recited! From Pushkin! From Lermontov! And a dozen others you’ve never heard of. Well, Vadim became my buddy. When we went to winter quarters, we bunked together. Shared everything. I my extra vodka, he the packages his mother sent him from home. Vadim’s mom was a very kind woman. When she wrote him a letter, she always sent me her regards. Thought it was great that we got along so well. We really did. We were inseparable. I taught him how to grease a gun barrel, how to wrap your feet against the cold, and he taught me about the stars, about faraway lands with strange people with odd customs and more. In our regiment, they called us blockhead and smarty-pants. Us two. Always together. Great time. Until they transferred Vadim. Penal company.

The political department had heard about his recitations, and they weren’t art lovers. Poems, no, that’s suspicious. So, a transfer. Not bad. Not bad yet. You can always write letters, and after the war, after the war we’ll find each other, celebrate the good outcome and then stay in touch and take care of each other just as well as now. I gave him my knife as a farewell gift. It was a good knife, one that could even cut through the bread rations, and everyone knows how hard that was. He gave me a drawing. He could draw, and how! It was a beautiful drawing, of him and me together at the table and his mother had made pancakes. A wonderful gift, but I lost it in the field hospital. They steal everything from you there, those bastards. I never saw Vadim again.

I received one more letter from him. Then nothing. Heard nothing more, two months, three months, and even longer. Until one day Sergej came up to me. Sergej was a boy from our village. Bad character, but I felt sorry for him because I knew he was always beaten at home. Then he’d sit crying behind the chicken coop and chase everyone away who came near to comfort him. So, he comes up to me. Very cheerful. “Hey, Joerotsjka, buddy, we’ve got news for you, Vadim, you know, Mr. Poet, Alexander Sergeyevich risen from the dead, well, now he’s really gone. And you know what’s ironic? Your buddy went into his coffin like a samovar, yeah, they shot his arms and legs off, he was completely mush. A samovar, just like your dad, right, Joerotsjka, good old Sasja Samovar.” After I knocked Sergej to the ground, I wiped my fists, first from blood and then from tears.