Kirchner's Tree

To all those who survived this horror and

those in whose hands it will not be repeated again

They say war doesn't have a woman's face. They say that we women are not cut out for this. We are more useful when we give birth and raise children, when we cook dinner for our husbands or even get a good education, but not when we hold a gun in our hands. They say we are more needed back home. But where will we be needed if our home is taken away? If the Germans will take away everything we hold dear, what good would it do then if we didn't die? We are human beings. Life has no meaning if we just exist like pigs growing up to be slaughtered. Like slaves who bow their heads obediently to their master and await their fate. I don't want to survive to live such a life. I would rather die here, fighting for my motherland as a loyal citizen of the Soviet Union. I told my mother that, and she forgave me. I hope she has. And I hope she will forgive me if I don't come home. Besides, it must be reassuring to her now that I am no longer here alone. Sasha, my fiance, is with me. Apart from me, there are seven other women in our partisan unit. I can't say it helps me. No, it doesn't bother me, I just don't care. I don't think any of us feel like women anymore. I admire each of them if I think about what was expected of us, but as time goes on, such thoughts arise in my mind less and less frequently. I no longer see the difference. Every day I am less a woman and more a soldier. Here, in war, the boundaries are blurred and you forget what it means to be a man or a woman. And yet, there is a funny thing. The war has made us rougher, made our skin thicker, but our male comrades still try to look after us as best they can. I don't need custody, but I understand why they do it. They just cannot act otherwise. After all, they are here for us. Women, children, old people: we are the homeland they defend, for which they shed their own and the enemy's blood. They took up arms so we wouldn't have to. That's why it pains them to see that we are here after all. They feel guilty for letting the enemy to go this far.  "This is wrong", said our commissioner once. Once again, he spoke out loud the thoughts of many. "You girls shouldn't be here..." But is anything in this war right? Does anyone, anyone at all, have to die here? I am here because I have to be. I am a woman, but this is my country, my homeland, my people. War is wrong in and of itself. Neither women nor men should die here. Not me, not the commissioner, not Sasha. I firmly know this. But Fritz left us no choice. Hiding at home under a blanket won't save us. Fighting is the only way to get our chance for a future life. Some will come home, some won't. The main thing is to have a place to return to. We are in camp seventeen versts from the village of Veretenino, in a dense forest. October nights are cold and there is no way to spend the night in a glade, so we finished building the dugout a week ago. First we dug a pit in the ground and lined it with logs from the inside. Then we put a wooden frame of supports and slabs on top and masked it with natural materials. We made a table, stools and bunks out of planks. There is only hay instead of mattresses and blankets, but a firewood stove for warmth. Inside our dugout looks like an ordinary hut, but outside it is a mound of grass. We need this disguise because the Nazis use aircraft to detect partisan units. Their planes fly slowly and low over the terrain, scoping it out carefully. This is why we never build an open fire, avoid much smoke and thoroughly camouflage our movement with vegetation, the folds of the terrain and the darkness of the night. Sometimes, to mislead the Germans, we openly burn bonfires away from the camp. The weather today is unsettling and gives me a bad feeling. The clouds, which normally walk aimlessly and lazily across the sky, now seem to be in a hurry. I'm sitting outside, cleaning my rifle. In the morning we ran into a group of saboteurs. Immediately after the battle, I cleaned the fouling from the barrel channel and now I'm doing a complete clean-up. In war, it is a sacred ritual, almost like a prayer. Timely cleaning and correct lubrication make the gun trouble-free. It's one of our ground rules to keep your rifle clean and ready for action under all conditions. It took me a while to learn all this. In the early days I used too much gun grease, which caused delays in the operation of the rifle. Later I learned not to use too much grease and to wipe off the excess with a gauze soaked in paraffin, if there was any. My rifle is my fellow comrade. Partisan units are poorly armed, weapons are in short supply. That's why I treasure mine. "Have you got any clean gauze left?" Sasha asks, having just come out of the dugout. "It's all there, fighter Ponomariov," I reply cheerfully and hand him a clean cloth. Sasha sits down beside me and concentrates on removing the powder residue from his rifle. Meanwhile, I proceed to grease mine. We sit on a fallen trunk under a large elm tree. Its spreading crown hides us from aerial surveillance. Andrei and Grigoriy Valentinovich stand at a distance in patrol from different sides, but we're still keeping our eyes open. "You know, Jaroslava, I'm mad at you," says Sasha suddenly. "I really am." "What is it?" I ask with poise. Sasha looks grim, his voice sounding resentful. "When I went to the front, you promised me that you would stay as far away from war as possible," is all he replies. Really? Don't you understand me, Sasha? Didn't you rush into battle as soon as you heard the news of the outbreak of war over the loudspeakers?  Or have you already forgotten how you feared the war would end before you had time to perform a single heroic act? I always get angry when Sasha starts talking about it again. But I answer as calmly as possible. "I'm more needed here. You know they need people like me, don't you?" He does. My mother was a German teacher at school and taught my brother and me this language from a very young age. She could hardly have suspected where it would come in handy for us, but it worked perfectly. We were being prepared for this war even before Nazism was born. In 1941, I was even going to go to a pedagogical institute and study foreign languages there. The war wiped all my former plans and dreams into the dust, but made knowledge of German appreciated everywhere and more than ever. Now I can serve my fatherland. There is no greater honour. I grew up in the Kursk region, in the village of Starshoye. Sasha's grandparents were our good neighbours. He often came there from Kursk to visit them. That's how we met in 1931. The first time we met, I was about six centimetres taller than him; we were both eight years old. Now we are both nineteen, and Sasha is two heads taller than me. Back then he wore expensive city clothes, now he wears a battle-worn Red Army uniform. We spent time together every time he came to the village. He came often. We were inseparable. He was my best friend, but when we were fifteen, he dared to ruin our friendship by confessing his love for me. Moreover, without even giving me a chance to express my indignation, he kissed me and ruined everything for good. I shoved him away from me, slapped him dashingly and yelled at him with an insulted look. "Are you out of your mind?! I'm a Komsomol girl! I don't need any love! And you Sasha, you're just a fool!" These memories make me smile. After that incident, we didn't speak for almost two years. Then we happened to cross paths and became good friends again. I thought that his feelings for me were probably long gone and it would be safe to be friends with him now. But Sasha was becoming more masculine and I was becoming more feminine. We were both growing up, and I began to feel things I had never felt before. When we were eighteen, I dared to kiss him myself. In May 1941 he asked me to marry him and in June he went off to war. I remember that day in all its colours as if it were yesterday. How could I believe the war had begun? Would the sun shine so brightly if there was a war? But when I saw my father and my older brother off to the front, I realised that the sun didn't care about us. Like daisies, it doesn't take sides on the battlefield. When Sasha came to say goodbye, I cried. The weather was the same as the day we first met, and I looked at him, my beloved Sasha, and feared that this meeting was the last. He no longer looked like the boy he had been in '31. The look in his green eyes was deeper, his blond hair darker, his face more manly, his body stronger, but his heart... His heart remained the same. It remained just as big now. I remember throwing myself on his neck and crying, "Dad's gone, Lyosha's gone, and you're leaving, and I'm staying like some kind of coward! What a shame!" Sasha stroked me on the back and said, "I won't let Fritz come to the village, I won't let them come to you, do you hear me? They won't hurt you! I will survive to keep them from getting here. And then I'll come back to you. I promise. Just wait for me, Yasya..." I would have waited for him, I swear, I would if I had not been ashamed to stay home while my homeland was drowning in blood and needed me, needed all of us. In October '41, I cut my hair to my shoulders and joined the partisans. In those days the Germans occupied my home village. My mother and my younger brother and sister stayed there. Trapped. Sasha was conscripated into 167th Guards Rifle Regiment. At the beginning of autumn our army suffered huge losses in the battles with the Nazis. Entire divisions fought in encirclement and retreated to the east. Not all of them made it to the front line. For several days Sasha and his comrades had been climbing out of the encirclement through the woods. They did not know what to do or where to go. Some of the Red Army soldiers laid down their arms and waited in doom for the Germans to come, but Sasha and his comrades refused to surrender. This is why the inhabitants of the surrounding villages did not allow them into their homes, fearing that the Germans would come and shoot them along with them. But there was a woman in the village of Kholstinka who let them in and fed them boiled potatoes. They called her Aunt Pelageya. The same day the Germans came as if they could smell it. Aunt Pelageya hid Sasha and his comrades. The Germans searched the village, gathered all the unarmed soldiers of the Red Army and drove them in a column to the village Mikhailovskoye. There they rounded up all of the surrenders from the encirclement and starved them to death. One thing was clear to Sasha and his comrades: hiding and doing nothing was not an option. They were lucky — Aunt Pelageya was a loyal friend of the partisans and helped them meet. In October Sasha took the partisan oath and became a fighter in the Mikhailovsky partisan detachment. In January 1942, I went to the Mikhailovsky district with a letter from the command of my detachment. On the Bukovica River near the village of Troyanovo I had to fight with the police. Partisans of Mikhailovsky detachment came to my aid. Sasha was among them. So the war that divided us has united us again. The story gave everyone hope. They thought it was a good sign. My commander said, "It's not for me to come between you if even war can't." And allowed me to join the Mikhailovsky detachment. "Don't be angry, Sasha," I say, putting the rifle away. "It's going to be all right." After a little more silence, Sasha says, "They're sending us to recon tomorrow morning." "Where to?" "To the village of Mikhailovskoye. It's getting noisy there. Looks like the new troops have arrived. Probably they're getting ready for the offensive." "We'll find out," I say firmly. "And why are you so frowny?" "Because I can't go there with you," replies Sasha, wiping the channel of the barrel. "Like, I'll attract unnecessary attention. I'm only allowed to go as a messenger, in case you have to stay there for a while. I'll wait for you in the woods." It's not the first time we've been sent on a recon mission like this. Sasha is always angry if he can't accompany me. I don't usually take a rifle or any other bulky weapon with me on a recon mission. Especially not to Mikhailovskoe, where the enemy headquarters is located. There are many German officers, field radios, staff cars and other Nazi crap there. This is a dangerous place. I must be careful not to arouse the slightest suspicion of the Germans. Simply put, I need to pass for a local, so the only weapons I can bring with me are grenades, which I'll hide under my clothes. None of this is to Sasha's liking either. Forty minutes later I meet our commander, Andrei Timofeyevich, and he personally orders me to conduct a reconnaissance. He wants me to question the locals discreetly without arousing Fritz's suspicions; to observe what's going on around the area, to see if the political mood has changed in Mikhailovskoe; if possible, to find out what troops had arrived there the day before - this may help us find out what actions the Nazis are preparing for. He also trusts me to check where the officers are stationed and whether their locations have changed. We leave tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we have a pleasant evening in the company of our comrades in arms. There are eight of us, sitting around a rough wooden table in the light of two paraffin lamps. Aleksandr Pavlovich plays the harmonica, Sasha sings, and the others sing along. The lamps burn dimly, illuminating the space with their reddish light and leaving the corners dark, but it's enough for me to see Sasha's handsome face. Sasha... my Sasha. He is gorgeous from the depth of his eyes to the gentle touch of his hand on my own, from his generous judgement to the sound of his lovely voice. He has matured so much since we said goodbye at the beginning of the war. I wish I could admire him like I used to, like a normal girl in love. I wish I could afford to be one now. Just over a year ago, we had all the things we dream about now. If only we had known then how happy we were! If only we had known how precious it was to not have to listen to the rustles in the forest, to not have to fear shelling, to trust the silence... To hold the hand of the man dear to my heart, to look at the stars with him at night and not think about the fact that any second we could both be gone. Perhaps in a week's time I will remember these simple moments in the dugout in exactly the same way. Even though we're at war, they are beautiful moments.  I fear that one day they will become memories: moments when I could still see Sasha and hear his voice. The shadows quiver on his pretty face, the fire burns in his eyes. I can see a young passion dancing there inside, a desire to live and defend this country. But the words from his mouth are not the same, the words of an old romance. He sings:

Not for me the spring will come, Not for me the Don will burst, And with rapture of feeling A girl's heart beats not for me.

The men's choir is accompanied by two beautiful women's voices of Tamara and Varya. Their singing touches my heartstrings and makes me want to sing:

Not for me the gardens are in bloom, In the valley a grove is blooming, Where the nightingale welcomes the spring, He won't sing for me.

I always loved to hear Sasha sing, before the war he often sang by the fire with a guitar in his hands, but those were very different songs back then.

Not for me the streams are babbling, Running in diamond streams, There's a maiden with black eyebrows, She's not growing up for me.

Sometimes he looks at me with that familiar look of his.

Not for me comes Easter, The whole family will gather around the table, "Christ is risen" from their lips, The Easter Day is not for me.

He sings this song so cheerfully, as if it's not about death. It's as if he doesn't know that death is just around the corner, as if he still doesn't know where we are. At this moment he seems the same boy he was on the twenty-first of June, before we learned that Hitler's scum had attacked the borders of the Soviet Union. And yet I know the truth - the war has made him grow up. He can't afford to show it — for my sake and for his own, he pretends to be carefree so he doesn't let the dreadful reality drag us down to hell. Here it's risky to put fears into words — they can take on enormous proportions and become impossible to overcome. That's why we sing about death as if we weren't afraid of it. Let it believe so. Then we will believe so, too. Sasha finishes the last verse:

For me is a piece of lead It will stick into the white body, And hot blood will flow. Such a life, brother, awaits for me.

____________________ The romance "Not for me the spring will come" was written in 1833 by by marine officer A. Molchanov. This new (one of many) version of the romance appeared after the revolution, in the 1920s. Written by N. Devitte