Still no letters from Shura…But then, shortly after the five photographs, I opened Pravda and there was a dispatch on the third page:
"Army in the Field. October 27 (by telegraph). Units of X formation are engaged in fierce battles, destroying the remnants of the 197th German Infantry Division, the officers and soldiers of which in November 1941 in the village of Petrishchevo tortured and murdered the valourous partisan Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. The five German photographs published in Pravda showing her execution have called forth a fresh wave of wrath among our soldiers and officers. Here, Zoya's brother—Komsomol member and tank officer, Lieutenant Kosmodemyansky—is fighting valiantly to avenge his sister. In the battle the crew of the '1KV' tank under the command of Comrade Kosmodemyansky was first to break through the enemy's defended locality, shooting and crushing the Hitlerites. Major G. Vershinin."
Shura was alive! And avenging his sister! And he was destroying those very Hitlerites who had tortured and murdered Zoya…
And again I began to receive letters, not from peaceful Ulyanovsk now, but from the very thick of battle.
And on January 1, 1944, I was awakened by the doorbell.
"Who can that be?" I wondered aloud. I opened the door and stood petrified by the suddenness of it: framed in the doorway stood my son, Shura.
He seemed a real giant to me—straight, broad-shouldered, wearing a long greatcoat with the smell of frost still in it. His face glowed with the wind and the quick walk, the snowflakes were melting on his thick brows and eyelashes, his eyes shone gaily.
"Why do you look like that, don't you recognize me?" he asked laughing.
"I took you for Ilya Muromets at first!" I answered.
This was a most unexpected and a most precious New \ear's present.
Shura's joy at his homecoming was no less than mine. He would not leave my side for a moment, and if he wanted to go out—for cigarettes or just for a stroll—he would say like a little boy, "Come with me!"
Several times a day he would ask the same thing, "Tell me how you live."
"But I've written about it all…
"Do you still get letters? Let's see them…Let me help you to answer them."
I really did need help. The letters kept coming in an endless stream.
People wrote to me, to the school where Zoya had studied, to the editors of newspapers, to district committees of the Komsomol.
"When I'm on sentry duty it seems to me that Zoya is beside me," Octyabrina Smirnova, a girl soldier of the same age as Zoya, wrote to me from Stalingrad.
"I swear I will serve the people honestly, I will be like Zoya," wrote a Moscow girl, also of Zoya's age, to the Tagansky District Committee of the Komsomol, asking to be sent to the front.
"I will bring up my pupils to be like Zoya, like your brave wonderful daughter," said a young teacher from the Bashkir Autonomous Republic.
"It is our grief, it is the people's grief," wrote the children of a school in Novosibirsk.
They kept coming in—sincere, heartfelt letters, vows, poems, from Siberia, the Baltic coast, the Urals, from Tbilisi. Letters came from abroad—from India, from Australia, America.
Shura read them all. Then went back to one which had come from England. Here it is, retranslated from a Russian copy I have kept:
Dear Comrade Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya,
My wife and I live in a small flat just outside London. We have just read about your dear brave daughter. The words she spoke before her death brought tears to our eyes. So much bravery, so much courage in so young a girl! We are expecting our first child at the beginning of next year, and if it is a girl we will call her after your daughter—the daughter of the great people of the first Socialist state.
With unbounded admiration we hear and read about your great struggle. But it is not enough to admire, we want to fight at your side—not words, but deeds, that is what is needed now. We are sure that the hour is not far off when we shall at last !see the destruction of the vile fascism which we hate as much as you do. Your people will go down in history as the people whose valour, courage and endurance made possible the victory over fascism. The British people understand well that they owe Russia a debt which cannot be repaid, and people often say here, "What would have happened to us, but for the Russians!"
In the cinema when Stalin comes on the screen the clapping starts at once with cheers of "Hurrah" and welcoming shouts. We end our letter with this wish: to victory and to our eternal friendship—in war and peace!
Long live the Soviet people and their glorious Red Army!
With brotherly greetings,
Mable and David Rees.
"Did you answer them?" asked Shura. "Good. I think it came from the heart, don't you? You can see they understand that we are fighting for everybody, not for ourselves alone. I only hope they don't forget that!"
In the evening my brother Sergei came round. Shura was very glad to see him. They sat down at the table, facing each other, and talked till late at night. I was doing some housework and kept on going out into the kitchen, so only snatches of the conversation reached me.
"…Didn't you write once that you broke away from the column and struck into the rear of the enemy?" said Sergei. "What for? That's not bravery, that's devil-may- care stuff. I don't like it! You've got to be brave, but why all this swashbuckling stuff?"
"Once you start thinking of your own safety you forget about bravery!" came the fierce answer.
"And aren't you responsible for the lives of your men? After all, you're in command…
"Tell me this, Shura," I heard a little later, "how do you get on with your subordinates? Now don't misunderstand me…Young fellows sometimes get big ideas about themselves…
"I'm friends with my men. If you only knew what they're like…
And again my brother's voice, "About bravery… I'd strongly advise you to read Leo Tolstoy's story 'The Raid' again. It's short and to the point."
Shura did not speak much about himself. He had become far more restrained than before and seemed to weigh every word. During this visit I felt that he had changed a lot. It was difficult to say how. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that whoever has been in battle but once, whoever has walked that narrow path, with life on one hand and death on the other, does not like to speak much about war, about the dangers he has endured. I realized that Shura had seen and gone through a lot and it must have been for this reason that he had become stern, far more grown-up and self-possessed, and at the same time—more gentle and softer.
The next day Shura went to the hospital to visit a wounded comrade. When he returned his face was quite different. I hardly recognized the merry giant of the day before. I looked worriedly into his dear face, so very young still. It was pale and drawn, and his cheekbones, his jaw, his knitted brows, with the furrow between them, and his tightly pressed lips, seemed suddenly to have become more prominent.
"What the fascists have done to him!" he said through his teeth. "He's my best friend, you know. He was an orphan before he was a year old. It was hard for him, but he grew up into a real man. He finished his military training, then went through the siege of Leningrad, was given medical exemption, but ignored it and went to the front again. And just recently he got everything at once: splinters in the lung, near the heart, in his arm, and a wound in the stomach, and shell shock. He cannot speak, cannot move, cannot hear—the horror of it! His name's Kolya Lopokha. If you could have seen how glad he was to see me…"Stay a little longer, dearest! After all, you deserve a rest…
"It's not a rest for me anyhow. I still can't think of anything but the front…and my comrades. And if you can, Mummy dear, see me off this time, will you? I want to be with you as long as I can."
I saw him off from Byelorussian Station. It was a quiet, frosty evening. A star twinkled above the railway lines in the greenish sky. And this stillness seemed so strange to me at a time when I was parting with my son, knowing that soon he would be again caught up in a whirlwind of fire and death…
We took a first-class ticket. Shura went inside to put his suitcase on the berth, and jumped out again in panic. "Mama, there's a general there!" he cried, confused and embarrassed like a small boy.
"You're a fine soldier!" I joked. "Off to the front, and afraid of one of your own generals?"
I stood with Shura on the platform till the last moment. The train moved off, I walked along beside the carriage and Shura stood on the step, waving to me. Then I could not keep up and just stood looking after him. The rumble of the wheels was deafening, the rush of air almost swept me off my feet, my eyes were wet with tears…Then the platform suddenly grew quiet and empty. But it still seemed to me that in the gloom ahead I could make out my son's face and his hand waving good-bye.
Shura went over to the window, and with his back to me he said, fiercely and passionately, as if he were repeating a charm, "I'll return to the ranks! No arms, no legs, blinded—no matter, I will live! I very, very much want to live!"
And on the third day after his arrival Shura said, "Don't be offended, Mummy darling, but I am leaving before time. It's hard for me here. People are dying out there, and here…I understand that life must go on but it's difficult for me."
"Stay a little longer, dearest! After all, you deserve a rest…
"It's not a rest for me anyhow. I still can't think of anything but the front…and my comrades. And if you can, Mummy dear, see me off this time, will you? I want to be with you as long as I can."
I saw him off from Byelorussian Station. It was a quiet, frosty evening. A star twinkled above the railway lines in the greenish sky. And this stillness seemed so strange to me at a time when I was parting with my son, knowing that soon he would be again caught up in a whirlwind of fire and death…
We took a first-class ticket. Shura went inside to put his suitcase on the berth, and jumped out again in panic. "Mama, there's a general there!" he cried, confused and embarrassed like a small boy.
"You're a fine soldier!" I joked. "Off to the front, and afraid of one of your own generals?"
I stood with Shura on the platform till the last moment. The train moved off, I walked along beside the carriage and Shura stood on the step, waving to me. Then I could not keep up and just stood looking after him. The rumble of the wheels was deafening, the rush of air almost swept me off my feet, my eyes were wet with tears…Then the platform suddenly grew quiet and empty. But it still seemed to me that in the gloom ahead I could make out my son's face and his hand waving good-bye.
Next: From the Bottom of My Heart