| Ukrainian Christmas Even Paska and candle. |
So my Ukrainian Christmas present to readers, and to Ukrainians around the world, is an excerpt from my upcoming book, still unnamed, the sequel to Army of Worn Soles. This is the story of my late father-in-law, Maurice Bury, and his experience on the eastern front in World War II as a Red Army soldier.
This section is set in the autumn of 1944, when the Red Army was pushing the Germans out of the Baltics, and meeting stiff resistance.
Niemen River (Border between
Lithuania and East Prussia)
October 10, 1944
The sun shone into Maurice’s eyes as the sergeant called a
halt. He leaned back and let his pack slide off his shoulders, then sat down,
grateful for a minute’s rest. The temperature had been dropping all day, and
Maurice’s nerves were pulled taught from the sounds of machine-guns and bombs
that grew ever closer as they marched. The Germans had retreated, but the boys knew
they were marching toward an enemy defensive position.
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| Niemen River, Lithuania. Image: Creative Commons |
The flatland of Lithuania continued as far
as they could see, but maybe two hundred metres to the south, a shallow, broad river
valley across the plain. That was the source of occasional gun- and
cannon-fire.
“The Niemen. Across that is East Prussia.
Germany," said a young officer, passing by. “Don’t get too comfortable.
That’s where we’re heading.”
By sunset, the gunfire died down. The two
armies were stalemated, facing each other across the valley of the Nieman
River, also known as the Neman and, in local Lithuanian, the Nemaunus. When the
sky was dark, the officers quietly ordered the men in Maurice’s troop to move
to the fortifications the Red Army had already dug, fifty metres from the bank.
No one knew, no one told them, but Stavka,
the Soviet high command, had already tried to penetrate into East Prussia and
take the strategic fortress of Konigsberg. The Baltic Offensive had succeeded
in driving the Germans out of most of Estonia and Latvia and had finally taken
Riga back from the Germans. Soviet General Bagramyan had pushed the Third
Panzer Army down the Baltic coast, where they holed up in the town of Klaipeda,
which the Germans had renamed Memel in 1939.
With the town surrounded, the Soviets then
committed four armies to attack into East Prussia, driving for a line from
Gumbinnen to Konigsberg, fifty kilometres further south.
General Erhard Raus’s Third Panzer Army
stopped the Red Army, though, and held it at the Neman River. The Stavka
decided to hold that position until it could bring in more reinforcements to
allow it to use its deep operations strategy. Maurice’s unit was just one part
of that strategy.
The soldiers already at the river had dug
trenches and made fortifications a few metres back from the banks. Maurice’s
unit found a place to set up camp. The next morning, they settled into a new
routine: patrolling the fortifications, watching the enemy across the broad
river, firing a few shots across just to let the enemy know they were watching.
When their watch was over, they went back for food and snatched what sleep they
could.
At night, Maurice did not sleep much. He
knew he should have made the most of this break in the fighting, but he
couldn't relax. Something big is going to happen soon. One day near the
end of October, Maurice thought the officers seemed to be stirring more than
usual. In the evening, as the sun hit the horizon, the major called the junior
officers into a circle; then the lieutenant of Maurice’s unit, Vasilyev,
gathered the men. “We’re going to do some reconnaissance across the river,” he
said. “Find out where Fritz has his cannons, tanks, and most important,
supplies. Get the directions back to our gunners. You'll have to be smart,
quiet, and you can't lose your head, or we're all done for. The Major’s looking
for four men.”
The sergeant, a tough old communist named
Nikolai Nikolaev, stepped in front of the unit. “Okay, with me, it will be
Oleh, Maurice and Mykhailo—it’s your turn, comrades." Maurice suddenly
felt as though his guts were wide, hollow and empty at the sound of his name.
Numbly he followed the sergeant and the other boys to the quartermaster’s
wagon. He felt another cold shock when he saw German uniforms lying on the
ground.
“Get dressed, boys,” said the
quartermaster, leering.
