I Became Stalin?!

Chapter 32

For several days, a light autumn rain started to fall. 

The ground, already damp from the humid weather, turned into a swamp that made it hard to take a step. 

The troops were ordered to halt. 

They managed to find some dry land on higher ground and set up a camp. 

The troops took a short break.

“When will this rain stop?”

Sergeant Bolozha became silent after witnessing the massacred corpses. 

He used to get annoyed and angry at any situation, but now he just glanced and passed by.

Since Sergeant Bolozha stopped spreading rumors, Private Micha took over his role.

Nikolai listened to the news that Micha brought from somewhere and chewed on the American chocolate he received as a ration. 

He savored the rich and sweet taste that filled his mouth. 

He wished his father and mother could try this.

He honestly liked the American chocolate more than the strawberry pie. 

Americans were indeed our friends.

“They say the Pasho invaders were almost driven to the edge by the last offensive. They have no supply lines. In Pripyat, General Budenny is striking down the Pashos like a storm… But they failed to liberate Minsk completely.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and they had to retreat because of Rasputitsa…”

Where did you hear that? Nikolai wanted to ask, but he felt like he had heard it somewhere. 

The old men in the next company were talking about it… Anyway, it was an interesting story to listen to while snacking.

“Thanks. Here, have some of this.”

“Thank you!”

Nikolai broke off a large piece of his chocolate ration and handed it to Micha. Micha smiled and started to munch on the chocolate. 

It was a big piece of chocolate, so Nikolai still had plenty left even after taking a big bite.

“Oh, and there’s a rumor that the Pasho generals were all wiped out. One of the Pasho bosses who was in charge of this area was dragged away as a traitor.”

The American radio was widely distributed, but it was not something that soldiers like Nikolai could touch. 

The news mostly came from Kremlin, Moscow, and was broadcasted through radio. 

NKVD often told stories about how hard the Pashos were struggling through propaganda broadcasts.

“So when do you think this rain will stop?”

That was what Nikolai was most curious about lately. 

When would this cold downpour stop? 

He felt like he had caught a cold. 

The officers were very concerned about the soldiers’ health in this season, afraid that they would get sick and spread it around.

During intense battles, life and death were the only issues, so they couldn’t care less about being ‘sick’. But now, the battle had entered a lull. 

Occasionally, Stukas appeared in the stormy sky, only to be chased away by Stormoviks or Tupolevs.

In fact, Nikolai’s unit hardly had any combat missions, but he hated the rain anyway.

“I don’t know. But I heard that this will all turn into snow in about a week. They say this winter will be very cold, so Private Nikolai, you should prepare warm clothes. They say they have prepared millions of winter uniforms from above… This year, the weather forecast says it will be very cold.”

“Hmm, okay. I’ll do that.”

Micha, who was still small and young-looking, showed off his thick mittens that his mother from his hometown had sent him. Nikolai suddenly remembered the old days.

If Kacha hadn’t died young, wouldn’t she be the same age as Micha? 

The young Kacha with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and rosy chubby cheeks died on a late autumn day when it rained lightly.

There was always a food shortage at the collective farm because of the quotas, and there was no medicine to speak of. Everyone was starving and shivering in the cold one day when Kacha fell ill.

Was it scarlet fever? 

The little girl who made a wreath for her brother and smiled brightly with it on her head had a boiling fever and a red body. 

She gasped for breath until one dawn when she returned to God who sent her.

The village doctor was incompetent but kind. 

The middle-aged doctor who had been the deputy chairman of the village Soviet twice said nothing but that there was no medicine. 

But he secretly slipped a bag of brown sugar he had gotten from somewhere into grandmother’s apron pocket.

He gave me some sugar and told me to melt it and feed it to the child, whose throat was swollen and couldn’t eat anything. 

He was getting weaker by the day. But Kacha died too soon. 

The leftover sugar became something like medicine for my grandmother and Nikolai, who had pneumonia in the winter.

The sweetness I tasted then. 

The American chocolate reminded me of that sweetness. And Misha, the private with dark brown hair like Kacha, also brought back those old memories.

“By the way, do you know why Sergeant Boloza is like that?”

“Huh? Isn’t Sergeant Boloza from that town over there?”

Nikolai asked Misha in a low voice, curious. 

Making sure Boloza, who was lying on the other side, didn’t hear him. 

He seemed to be asleep already. 

Misha answered as if he didn’t know that even though they had been together every day.

I guess so. 

He had said once or twice that his hometown was somewhere near Poland.

Sergeant Boloza had started his military service two years ago, or was it last year? 

He was assigned to the border guard near his hometown, and his hometown village must have been ravaged by the cruel fascist invaders. 

At least that’s what Sergeant Boloza seemed to think.

“Oh, right. I heard something else… about the identities of the massacred corpses?”

“Huh? Identities?”

“Yeah, those corpses… I heard that when they compared them with the village records, there were hardly any young women’s corpses. The fascists killed almost all the old people and children first, so the numbers matched. But young men who were drafted into the army, well… they didn’t kill young women, apparently. Except for pregnant ones.”

A chill ran down my spine. 

I hadn’t realized that at all. 

I felt nauseous when I saw the corpses of pregnant women with swollen bellies, but I didn’t care whether the corpses were male or female.

What happened to the women who were dragged away without being killed in this brutal war? 

Nikolai didn’t want to know.

“And… Sergeant Boloza has a fiancée, you know.”

“Oh…”

I think I heard that too. Sergeant Boloza enjoyed making vulgar jokes and gestures, but sometimes he would quietly look at a picture or a drawing in a necklace he wore with his dog tag. 

He was less obnoxious on the days he looked at it for a long time.

And he also bragged that when the war was over, he would go back to his hometown and use the ration priority given to senior veterans as a dowry and get married. 

It didn’t seem like this war would end anytime soon…

The soldiers who were caught up in this sudden war talked about their plans after they safely retired, trying to forget the fear of death that could come at any moment.

But now that his plan was completely uprooted… who could be calm? 

Nikolai began to feel sorry for the bastard sergeant. 

The soldiers used to go to the political officer to write letters to their hometowns, but lately Sergeant Boloza hadn’t gone once.

“But not all villages were treated like that, you know. Some of them evacuated in time and were fine… And some of the fascist troops didn’t massacre everyone, they just drove away the civilians.”

I wish that were true. Nikolai’s hometown was far from the front line and had little to do with the horrors of war, but some of the Ukrainian soldiers in his platoon seemed anxious about their hometowns that might have been turned into wastelands.

Are my parents okay? 

My mother grabbed me and sobbed at the train station as she sent her grown-up son to the army. 

The NKVD agent who watched us could have thrown her into a gulag for inciting defeatism, but maybe he wasn’t cold-blooded enough to have no blood or tears, he pretended not to see.

My father tried to act calm, but I could see his eyes were red. 

They must be working hard on the farm to fill the empty spots of young people…

“When will it end?”

“Huh?”

“This war. When will it end…?”

Next year? 

The year after? 

Or three or four years later? 

By then, Misha’s face would be hardened and he would be a grumpy veteran like Sergeant Boloza. 

How many times would he have crossed this hellish battlefield?

Or they might already be dead. 

Many of the comrades from his company and battalion, the ones who trained with him when he enlisted, the young men from the same collective farm, the ones whose faces and names Nikolai knew, had died.

The life of a farmer in the collective farm where he lived was not far from death either. But death was too common on the battlefield. 

Even as he chatted like this, he thought of death. 

Young Misha just smirked.

“Well… the political officer says we’ll be able to give the fascists a good blow this winter.”

“Yeah? That’s good news.”

He wanted to go back to the farm in the spring planting season next year. 

It wasn’t a very nice place to live, but his mother and father were waiting for him. 

His father, who smoked cigarettes and chopped wood in the crumbling hut on the hill, was so gruff, but he would run to him without even putting on his boots properly when his son came back.

When the day of victory comes! If the day of victory comes…

“…The winter offensive plan for the southern front was finally composed like this. Nineteen field armies are moving in a truly massive offensive. There was some loss in the autumn operation, but…”

Zhukov proudly explained the operation. I was curious about that ‘some loss’.

“So how much is that ‘some’?”

“Ah, Comrade Secretary.”

Zhukov looked through his report for a moment, as if he couldn’t remember the exact number, and then declared happily.

“About 17 thousand dead, 30 thousand wounded. Comrade Secretary.”

“Is that so? Hmm… that’s not much, as you say.”

In the eastern front, where millions of troops clashed and tens of thousands died every day, a casualty level of 10 thousand or so was nothing. 

Death was a tragedy when it was one, but a number when it was many.

In this place where hundreds of thousands of lives were at stake, they didn’t care about such small numbers. 

Soon the winter offensive would come and many more would die and get hurt…

The war had been going on for almost four years. 

It was too early to be scared.