Loss, and love, and loss
Dear Katrina,
Still the black waters. Let the moon set and the sunrise with you once more.
This barren island holds only the three of us now. Three lost souls, caught between warring titans. But on which bank of the Dnieper River does my fate wait, and hate?
I can but apologise for the long months since my last letter. This war brought many shortages. While we yearned for food and bandages most, the absence of paper and pencil has added to the eternal distance between us. And never has distance been so cruel. For though the void that keeps us apart is as wide as the cold blackness betwixt the moon and earth, from this small and desolate river island on which our boat grounded, I can see the smoke rising from the city where we lived and loved so long ago. They tell me it has been two years, but it may as well be two lifetimes since I lay in your arms, my Katrina.
I am no hero. No great cause stirred my heart, boiled my blood, and wrenched me from your side. No, my duty to the Motherland came smashing through our little wooden door with hobnail boots and rifles. The cause of the Soviets was never my own; you know this well. Like many in our beloved Ukraine, service in Russia’s horde was by imposition, not invitation. But serve I did.
You cried the day that they marched us away, away to a distant front. I carry that picture of you still, in mind only, for it was the first time that I had seen you cry. Not once had a tear passed your eye in the ten years since I begged the young girl to let me walk her to school through Kyiv’s autumnal golden sea. Perhaps my memories linger on now, through rose-tinted glasses, but I recall only laughter, joy, and love. Oh, so much love. I am not wedded to country or cause; I am bonded only to you. For you I live, and love, and fight, and die……. and kill.
I beg your forgiveness, my sweet Katrina, for I’ve taken a life. Stolen what was given by God to another man. Another man who held memories of his love, that fateful day when he left his far-off village and marched to a different drum. I was not his creator, nor even a deity, but his sordid, mud-soaked destiny I became.
“I should be proud,” I’m told.
“It was self-defence.”
“It was my patriotic duty to this Motherland.”
“One less fascist invader that we will have to drive back over the border.”
None of these pointless platitudes calms my soul. Had I stayed by your side and been likely shot for refusing to serve, would I have died a good man? How would God weigh cowardice against killing? It matters nought now. For I will be judged by man before ever meeting the redeemer.
The relentless advance of the Germans in ’41 left our unit surrounded against the banks of this very river.
“Hold,” said Stalin. “Fight to the last.”
We held and we fought. The promise of relief and supplies scurried round the trenches and bit the men as fatefully as did the rats and lice. Rats brought fever, lice delivered itching and suffering, but Stalin brought no food, no bullets, no succour. Then, on a rainy Rasputitsa morning, the vermin won. En masse, the regiment stood and walked West, hands held high. One hundred thousand Ukrainians stopped being soldiers of the Motherland, became prisoners, were made slaves, starved, and then were offered a meagre crust to become Hiwis. Through the eventual necessity of our captors, we were finally transformed into reluctant soldiers of the Fatherland.
Tolerated by the Germans, despised by all else.
Dressed half in German grey, half in Russian olive green, we joined the invaders’ procession East. First, digging trenches, carrying boxes, and cooking meals, the Europeans’ attrition quickly led to rifles being returned to our hands. “Fight the Russian, free your beloved Ukraine,” we were told, over and over. However, these Germans loved our homeland no more than the Soviets. What the Russians didn’t burn, the Germans stole. Two colossal armies raped, pillaged, and plundered their way over the Steppe.
Then, on a searingly hot Summer day, death and its accompanying sweet stench became mundane. Dismembered bodies, ripped torsos, smashed heads, solitary eyes, rented stomachs, and more, oh so much more, my love, these images of death filled the void the living left. While this mad chase across our country still numbered hundreds of thousands on either side, there had been millions on the start line. The flower of a generation swathed the land from the Dnieper to the Volga. Two million flowers and not a single seed spawned.
“The war is almost over.”
“One last push, men.”
“The Russians are beaten.”
“March to the Volga. Drive the Bolsheviks from Stalingrad, and we can all go home.”
Stalingrad. Write the name down, Katrina. I ask only one thing of you, other than your love. Never speak the name of that city again. My words to you have yet to be explicit. I couldn’t lie to you, but I thought many a day before conveying in this letter, the atrocities that passed my eyes, to scour their image on an unprepared mind. Though I would die before denying you anything that is in my power to give, my time in that city will never be shared. My death would be a far lesser burden on you than knowledge of the things I saw, oh god, the things I did there. I will not, no, I cannot ask forgiveness for there is no restitution for the souls that served in that godless place.
There was but one truth spoken in the bitter winter of ’42. The war ended on the banks of the Volga. It’s done now. Over. The incalculable cost of the Soviet victory stands giant over the ashes of the Wehrmacht. But still we fight. Still, the dead die.
In the year that has passed, our company has fled, ever further west. Sometimes, it was a comfort to me to know I was heading home to you. Yet we reached the gates of Kyiv, and the chase went on.
Through the streets I ran. I ran and ran and ran right past our little wooden door. I could have stopped. I could have knocked or even walked right in, but there is no place for me there now. At the side of a German deserter, you would have been shot. Harbouring one of the most hated hiwis, shooting may have been the best that they would have offered you.
I’ve betrayed both sides, although I chose neither. To you, my love is now poison. Even the discovery of this letter would be a bullet through your pretty head. That is why I write, yet I will never send. I comfort myself that maybe, just maybe, you hear my words now. Maybe you listened to my footfall as I passed your door. Perhaps the approaching Russians will also pass by. I pray that they leave you to live and love once more, Katrina.
It’s time to end my words. To complete the story that began and will finish with you. In the brief moment this letter has consumed, the two men who crossed the river and landed on this small island with me have both been taken by the cold night.
I am not sad. They are at peace now. Their war is over, and I view their last frozen tear only with envy. For sadness is the domain of the living, Katrina. Were I to go on, fate would have it that it would not be with you, and without you, there is no me.
My eyes will close soon. I smile, for repose brings dreams of you. Dreams are all I have now.
Overhead, Russian shells land on the West bank, and the few German guns reply. In the cold light of flares, I shut my eyes and whisper your name.
“Katrina.”
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