13. FLIGHT

THE railroad had already been cut by advance units of the Red Army somewhere to the north of the city, and only one escape route remained open: directly west along the Kuban River. One could go on military vehicles, by horse, or on foot.

A small group of us assembled for the journey. There was the Gorsky family, from whom I had rented my room for the last few months, and two tradesmen who had owned several small shops and had liquidated their affairs. The tradesmen had supplied transportation: six horses and three carts. I had supplied ‘legal protection’ in the shape of various German documents from the kommandatura, and I was considered to be generally in charge of the expedition.

We had already loaded two of the carts in our yard when our tradesmen arrived and announced that they had changed their minds. They had decided to go into hiding near the city.

We had to get under way without them, although neither Igor Gorsky nor his wife nor his mother-in-law nor I had ever had anything to do with horses—and the tradesmen had generously presented us with four horses and two carts.

I spent the last evening with my mother, to whom I gave most of the money that I had left and all the things I didn’t need for the long journey.

It was late when we said goodbye.

I walked the whole length of the city through the badly lit streets. Everywhere it was quiet except for the central streets, where the wagons of the refugees crawled on in unending files, sometimes held up by military police who were letting truck convoys through. Occasional flashes appeared on the eastern horizon but almost no sounds of explosions could be heard.

At the Gorskys’ house everything was in a mess. Almost all our things had already been loaded on the carts and we had to sleep wherever we could find a place. In the yard the horses were peacefully chewing their oats with a crunching sound, snorting slightly, and shuffling their legs. Igor, a flashlight in his hand, was stuffing a few small bundles under the cover of a cart.’

It was not yet dawn when we harnessed the horses and drove out of the yard, dressed as warmly as possible. Igor’s little five-year-old daughter Nina sat next to me. Igor with his wife and mother-in-law rode in the other cart.

The streets were almost empty. Not quite certain which street ran into the road we wanted, we set out for the western limits of the city.

The carts rumbled over the cobblestones. There was no point in hurrying the horses; if they should quicken their pace the carts would shake terribly. I felt unsure of myself in the role of coachman, but I tried not to make it evident that the horses, strictly speaking, were going as they liked and that it cost me tremendous efforts to make them turn comers when necessary.

It was already light when we reached the outskirts, but the streets were as deserted as before. In the last block I noticed an enormous puddle ahead, covered with a thin coating of ice. Doubt gripped me. I tried to stop the horses but without success. At a measured pace they entered the puddle and I was horrified to see the water come up to their knees. The cart followed the horses. There was a short splash – and we stopped. The wheels were entirely under water.

Having made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to pull the cart out of the water, the horses settled down calmly and answered all my shouts and whip with irritated movements of their tails.

Igor came up and after a short discussion we decided to unhitch the horses and try to get out of the puddle in reverse. After getting soaked, I managed to lead the horses out on to dry land, but when I had hooked the traces to the rear axle and tried to make them pull in the other direction, they would not strain a muscle.

We tried hitching the second team to the cart but the results were the same. Passers-by shouted advice to us, but it was about as useful as a bank is to a dead man.

We unloaded the cart, which had been sinking deeper and deeper into the thick mud. Even the horses were incapable of pulling it out.

Meanwhile the sun had passed its zenith. We made a meal from the supplies we had brought along, and tried to decide what to do. It was becoming obvious to us that inasmuch as we had not even managed to leave the city, a journey of hundreds of miles through strange country with horses would be something of a problem. However, be that as it might, we had to get out of the puddle, and I set out to find help in the city.

I was lucky. In about half an hour I came across a German truck taking on a load at a military warehouse. I explained my predicament as well as I could and asked for assistance. Finally, after a prolonged parley, the Germans agreed. They drove over to the scene of our tragedy and with no trouble at all pulled the wagon on to dry land with a rope.

Evening was approaching and we decided not to go any farther that day. In addition, under the influence of our painful experience, our desire to continue the trip with horses had evaporated.

‘I’d rather stay with the Bolsheviks; let them send me to Siberia, let them hang me, but I’m not going anywhere in these wagons,’ said Igor’s wife, Zina. Igor muttered something darkly. I kept quiet.

We hitched up the horses and went home, stopping in at my mother’s on the way to tell her about our unfortunate start.

In the morning there was a renewed discussion of the problem. Zina wanted to stay. Her mother thought that we had better go. Igor was neutral. His brother, who had decided earlier to stay, advanced arguments in favour of remaining.

I left the others to decide what they were going to do, having told them that I was departing under any and all circumstances, and went downtown.

Just after turning into the main street I came upon the body of a man who had been hanged. It swung back and forth slightly in the wind, the feet about a foot off the ground. The passers-by looked furtively and hurried on. I stopped.

It was the body of a man twenty-five years old. He was badly dressed. There was a wooden shield on his breast with an inscription in Russian: ‘I looted.’

A few blocks farther, on the boulevard, there were two more. Their signs said: ‘I incited people to destroy Germans.’ At the marketplace there were three more bodies, but these had apparently been shot first and then hanged. They were labelled looters. One of them was a woman.

I went to one of the district police stations, the head of which I knew very well. It was empty. All the police had left two days before.

I went to military police headquarters. Luckily I ran into a lieutenant whom I knew there. He was surprised to see me and somewhat suspicious.

‘Are you still here? Why haven’t you gone? The whole city government left a long time ago. You’re not planning to stay by any chance, are you?’

‘No, I’m not planning to stay. I’ve had too much to do with you and your countrymen to risk my neck. But my friends and I have no means of leaving.’ And I told him about our unsuccessful attempt to navigate the puddle.

‘I think I may be able to help you,’ he said. ‘One of our units is leaving tonight and they’ll be able to take you in one of their vehicles. How many of you are there?’

‘Five.’

‘All right. I’ll write you out a note to that effect.’

‘Thank you very much.’

‘Leave everything. Get away tonight with the column I told you about. Here’s the note. The front line units will be in town tomorrow; the field headquarters is already here. And a couple of days after that it will be too late. Goodbye.’

I managed to locate the unit which was leaving that night for the Kuban, and with the help of the lieutenant’s note persuaded them to take us along. Then I hurried home, where Igor and Zina, having overcome their misgivings, were sorting out their belongings again, leaving out all inessentials. I explained where they had to go to be taken into the convoy, and then rushed over to my mother’s. On the way I noticed columns of smoke in several places. The Germans were burning something.

My mother was already settled in her new home, with her sister and a friend. They occupied two rooms in a deserted house, in an area where no one knew them. My mother was overjoyed to hear that I had found a way to leave. I tried again, for the last time, to persuade her to come with me. She shook her head:

‘Let’s not talk about it, Vladimir. It’s decided. I’m staying no matter what awaits me in the future. Goodbye, my darling. My heart tells me that you and I will never see each other again. I won’t live long, and you can never return. I don’t believe in any changes after the war. Don’t you believe in them either. If the way is ever open to you to come back, seek out my grave and say a prayer over it. . . .’

That night we left the city, which was partly illuminated by the light of fires and occasional flashes from the artillery battery firing on the high bank of the river.

There were about twenty trucks in the convoy. A corporal was in charge. There were very few soldiers. It was cold and damp, and we tried in vain to get warm, huddled together in the corner of the canvas-topped truck.

When we arrived at the convoy’s destination, a small Cossack village on the left bank of the Kuban, we had to climb out of our truck and try to find another. We spent all day by the side of the road, seated on a pile of suitcases and bundles, trying to flag down passing trucks, but we had no luck. Then we set out to look for shelter for the night in one of the small houses along the road. This was not an easy task. Soldiers were billeted everywhere, and there were many other refugees like ourselves. Finally a Cossack who was about to leave the next day himself permitted us to spend the night on the floor of his kitchen. We were busy until late at night carrying our baggage in. Zina stood guard, Igor and I carried the bags, while little Nina and her grandmother stayed in the house. After this we decided to leave some more things behind, and pack the others more compactly so the process of moving would not be so difficult in the future.

In the morning we resumed our vigil by the side of the road. After a few hours’ wait we managed to stop a German truck. The driver, for a bottle of wine, agreed to take us a few dozen miles farther.

We spent that night in someone’s hayloft where we almost froze, and in the morning went back to the road.

After three days of this type of travelling we reached a Cossack village by the name of Varenikovskaya, where we were ordered off our truck by military police who announced that we could go no farther on military vehicles; they were to cross the Straits of Kerch at a different point from the civilian refugees. We had another 50 miles to get to the straits and no idea what to do.

Varenikovskaya was overflowing with refugees and we had to spend the night by the road in a repulsive mixture of rain and snow. Only Nina and her grandmother were allowed to stay under the roof of a near-by stable.

Igor and I found a German headquarters where, it was rumoured, passes were issued to cross the straits on the ferry. As the corporal was filling the pass up for us a German general walked into the room. I asked him for help in getting to the crossing and requested that we be given some food, since our supplies were running out and it was impossible to buy anything.

The general heard me out silently. Then he told the corporal to write out two memoranda, one to the Verpflegungstelle telling them to issue us ten food rations, and another to instruct a lieutenant, who was taking some wagonloads of Russian volunteers for the German Army to the crossing, to take us with him.

We returned to our ‘camp’ in triumph. We were equipped with a great morale builder: ten soldier’s rations, each consisting of two pounds of bread, two cans of meat, a few cigarettes, and small quantities of butter and jam.

It was not hard to locate the lieutenant who was supposed to take us with him. He turned out to be a quiet young man, the son of an Austrian bishop. He immediately turned one of his six wagons over to us. Our countrymen, the volunteers, obeyed his orders with a certain amount of grumbling, and the team of horses that they hitched up to our wagon was definitely the worst in the column. When we finally began to move Igor and I did not dare sit in the wagon because it was evident that our team could never hope to pull such a load. On the upgrades we had to help the horses by pushing.

We travelled on back roads which our guide, one of the volunteers, apparently considered to be the shortest route. There was a certain advantage in this, however, because we spent the nights comfortably in tiny settlements, being the only transients there. We were able to get milk for the little girl, sometimes even bread.

Our wagon was on the tail end of the train. Little Nina rode up in front with Lieutenant Georg. Whenever we got too far behind he would stop the column and wait for us.

The idyll ended when we reached the straits, after several days on the road.

At the crossing there was real chaos. Tens of thousands of carts and wagons were crowded in a dense pack along the shore. And as for people, there must have been at least a hundred thousand. Two ferries were running back and forth to the Crimean shore, and the people without horses were given priority. Hundreds of unhitched horses wandered through the human mass looking for hay or straw.

We decided to go on without horses, especially as ours were too weak to be of any value. We unhitched them, spreading out all the remaining feed in the wagon so that they could reach it, and took our place in the enormous line waiting for the ferry.

Every type of person was in the crowd. Old men, young men, women, children, members of the intelligentsia, peasants, Cossacks, and even workers. Some were very hungry; others had large supplies of food with them. Some had piles of baggage, others small bundles or nothing at all. A steady roar of thousands of voices arose from the mob. People were shouting, moving about, sitting or lying on bundles of straw.

The cold March night came on. A few people tried to light fires, but others protested; they were afraid of bombing by Soviet planes. We were told that a week before our arrival a few bombs had been dropped on this spot, and afterwards the crowd had been strafed with machine-gun fire at low altitude. More than two thousand had been killed. This happened by daylight, and the pilots could not help but see that there wasn’t a single German soldier at the ferry landing.

At the end of the next day our turn to board the ferry finally came. Flocks of seagulls circled over the water and followed the ferry. When a wide strip of water had appeared between us and the Caucasian shore, I suddenly felt that still another period of my life had moved into the past. . . .

On the other shore everyone coming off the ferry was immediately loaded into trucks and taken to the railroad station. This operation was being run by Germans dressed in uniforms of an unpleasant yellow colour that I had not seen before. I was told it was that of the German civilian administration, the organization directed by Rosenberg and by Reichskommissar-for-the-Ukraine Koch. In the Caucasus, in the regions near the front, we had had only military administration.

On the road to the station we passed through the city of Kerch, or to be more accurate, through what used to be the city of Kerch. There was nothing left of it but piles of ruins, the result of heavy fighting a year before.

At the station we received a little bread and soup and were directed into a broken-down freight car which was dirty, cold, and not exactly cosy. The Germans were rough and rude with the refugees, not much better than the N.K.V.D. with prisoners.

When the cars were packed full the train started up. We huddled together for warmth, but it did not help much. We were seated on the few bags we had left; two had been lost during the crossing.

The train moved slowly, stopping often. The ruined stations were crowded with Germans, local residents, and refugees. There was snow everywhere, and people stamped their feet and rubbed their hands and ears to keep warm.

Our car did not get any warmer and little Nina was so cold that she began to cry. We had already left the Crimea and had stopped at Melitopol when we decided to leave the refugee train.

Long experience had taught us that the worst route to travel over was the one taken by everyone. Since we knew a little German and were equipped with various German documents, we had a chance to make our way independently.

The Melitopol station, which we finally persuaded two German sentries to let us enter, was full of soldiers. There was very little light, and so much smoke that the few electric bulbs were scarcely visible. By one wall stood a line of soldiers and officers who were being doled out coffee and soup by girls with little red crosses on their caps.

Igor and I got into line too, and we received five portions of coffee and soup in our kettles, which made us all feel stronger. I noticed that many soldiers were going into another room and coming out with bundles of rations like the ones we had received at Varenikovskaya by order of the general.

My mouth watered at the sight of all the sausage, Swiss cheese, boxes of Norwegian sardines and other wonders. I gathered up my courage, took out the general’s note and the pass we had received when we left, and presented them to the sleepy corporal sitting at the ration table. He did not even read them. Having seen the stamp which showed that we had already received rations four days before, he placed his own stamp on the note and gave me a ticket good for five four-day rations. With this ticket I received so many wonderful things that I could hardly carry them all at once.

My friends greeted me enthusiastically and we immediately began to eat.

From this day on I drew regular rations at every Verpflegungstelle upon presentation of my precedent-hallowed document. None of the clerks bothered to read the well-stamped paper. They merely sought out the last date and issued me rations for the next period.

My conscience did not trouble me a bit. I don’t know how else we would have existed all this time. We had very little money, and the food which the Germans issued to refugees at so-called ‘evacuation points’ was insufficient and very bad. We travelled in freight trains as before but got out at stations very often to rest and get warm.

In Zaporozhe we found ourselves on a flatcar in a train bound for Dnepropetrovsk. The planks were strewn with hay and the hay was covered with snow; we burrowed into it as deep as possible to get away from the biting cold wind.

The train made many long stops and finally halted completely. I climbed out of the hay and saw that we were in an open field. Jumping off the car I ran to the engine to find out what was the matter. The German engineer told me that a few miles ahead a Soviet tank column had broken through and captured the next station, Sinelnikovo. In addition to the refugees there were two German soldiers and a fireman aboard the train. They conferred with the engineer and decided to go back to Zaporozhe.

Just as the train began to move backward I noticed a flash of fire very close, behind a group of buildings. Then there was the report of a gun, a second, and a third one. From somewhere in the direction of Sinelnikovo came answering reports. A shell whirred overhead and burst not far from the train, which began to increase speed.

We got back to Zaporozhe in the morning, utterly frozen. While the others slept in the station Zina and I found out that it was possible to get to Kiev only by travelling on the other side of the Dnieper, passing over the famous Dneprostroy Dam. We received a paper from the local kommandatura with instructions to the military police to take us to the next station. After a long wait of several hours at a cross road to which we dragged all our things, we climbed into a truck that the military police stopped for us.

The Dneprostroy Dam had been so well blown up by the retreating Soviets in 1941 that the Germans had only been able to set two turbines going again. As we crossed it we breathed a sigh of relief. Once again we had escaped our countrymen advancing into the Ukraine.

On the other side of the Dnieper we had to take one more train to get to Kiev. Since leaving our native city we had changed our means of transportation twenty-five times.