August 1942: Father Don
Oh, lambent sun.
Ever-guiding sun, brother,
we go ever vorwärts.
Eastward.
Light across the plain.
The heat chars our lips.
Again and again we raise the Feldflasche,
water dribbling down our chins.
When a well is fresh,
we rejoice.
Cool depths.
Water sheening below us.
Our languid faces reflected there.
Around the Feldküchen
we laugh over the photograph
of Heydrich’s fiancée.
A Montmartre girl.
Hand-tinted cheeks.
A gloved arm lifting her breasts.
The other drawing down her girdle.
Milk-soft.
“Well then, Luchs.
You have yourself a little beauty.”
The cruel thing about Alois
was his instinct for private wounds.
Always prying.
Always listening for weakness
in another man’s voice.
Still, the sun stretches
long sienna bands across the steppe.
Grass hummocks undulate in the wind.
Is this forever?
Meadowland,
you seem eternal.
Kameraden.
Tawny hair burnt gold beneath the heat.
Cobalt eyes gone dull with dust.
The steady lines of men
moving in Kolonne.
A freckled face.
Copper curls beneath field caps.
A grin cast sideways.
Tornisters pulling at the shoulders.
Our boots drum the earth,
hobnailed soles imprinting themselves
across the winding kilometers.
Gullies.
Dust.
The broad summer sky.
A Cossack cottage appears ahead of us.
Rough wood silvered by sun.
A crooked fence.
Melons swelling in the fields.
The old Cossack greets us smiling,
a plate in hand:
bread curled with salt.
We make Lager there.
Melon juice cools the tongue.
Sweetness thick with sunlight.
Our laughing faces glisten beneath the arbor.
The ides of summer.
Halcyon days.
Above us, pale clouds drift
through a blue so broad
it scarcely seems earthly.
At dusk:
Zeltbahn snapping in the wind.
At dawn:
horses stamping the ground.
Harness jingling.
The roadside grass folding beneath wagon wheels.
Then...
wind.
Dust in our teeth.
A Feldgendarme stands ahead of us,
sepia goggles masking his face.
Painted road markers rise in his hands.
Lorries.
Field guns.
Bicycles.
Ponies.
The whole machinery of the army
presses toward the Brückenkopf.
Kalatsch.
The Don.
Father Don.
Warden of worlds.
The pontoon bridge sways gently above the current.
War horses clatter over the planks.
A Kübelwagen coughs smoke into the air.
Rose-cheeked boys whirl past us on bicycles.
Leopold lingers by the reeds,
watching the river eddies turn beneath the sun.
Crushed leaf.
River musk.
Mud warming in the heat.
Above us the light spreads outward
like a vast kino-set.
The plain stretches endlessly east.
Heat rises from it in trembling sheets.
Boys.
Men.
Fathers.
The fatherless.
All Kameraden.
“Bathing!” someone shouts from the bridge.
Laughter rolls over the water.
We descend the bank together,
steel helmets hanging from our hands.
The Don gathers around our ankles.
Cold.
Olive-colored.
Slow-moving.
“Enjoy it while you can,”
a stout voice laughs above us.
“The Russians are famous for their banyas.
The city will be full of them.”
More laughter.
We soak there beneath the sun
until our bones feel cooled through.
Then back into the shade.
Bronze stalks.
Silver grass.
Yellow reeds shifting in the wind.
The Feldküchen breathe steam into the afternoon.
Pea soup.
Potatoes.
Sweet onion.
All around us:
the metallic trill of Kochgeschirr unfastening.
For one hour
the war feels distant.
A heat-lightning flare
arches above our feasting hands.
Far away, Panzer treads
have already worn grooves into the roads ahead.
VORWÄRTS.
The evening descends slowly.
Alois recalls the painted horses
of a carnival merry-go-round.
Scarlet ribbons.
Music spinning through warm night air.
“Leben. All better. Stay focused.”
Rose powder.
Hands scented faintly of flour.
Steam rises from the field canteen.
Ersatz coffee passes between us.
Franz smokes beside the fire.
“From Afrika,” he says,
holding up a lithograph of Cleopatra.
We laugh at the pink pointed nipples.
Then we fasten our kit once more.
Ever eastward.
Behemoths gather across the steppe.
Panzers.
Well-oiled creatures of steel and heat.
An Unteroffizier walks beside them,
camera hanging against his chest.
He photographs the Panzer men.
Young faces filled with life.
Grins.
Squinting eyes.
Arms slung across shoulders.
Kameradschaft.
A captured instant before disappearance.
Then...
something shifts.
The atmosphere tightens.
A pall settles slowly across the land.
Green-yellow smoke drifts through the air.
Above us:
squadrons of birds of prey.
Balkenkreuz on the wings.
Engines singing jaunty metallic notes.
Sunlight flashing across aluminum.
They circle patiently overhead.
Waiting.
The city appears through smoke.
Dry heat.
Metal in the mouth.
Telephone poles spitting tar into the streets.
Creosote thick in the air.
Brickwork burst open.
Whole rooms exposed to the sky.
Flotsam scattered across the roads.
Red Square burning.
Cordite.
Sulfur.
Smoke funneling upward
toward heaven itself.
September
