Loss, and love, and loss
Dear Katrina,
Still the black waters. Let the moon set and the sunrise with you once more.
This small, barren island holds only 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?
Sorry, it’s been too long since my last letter. This war has brought many shortages, and while we lack food and bandages the 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 that our boat has found, 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—no invitation, but serve I did.
You cried the day 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 I saw you weep. Not once did a tear pass 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. Maybe my memories live on now, through rose tinted glass, 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, I’ve taken a life. Taken what was given by God to another man. Another man that 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 was likely shot for refusing to serve, would I have died a good man? How would God weigh cowardice against killing? It matters naught now. For I will be judged by man before ever meeting the redeemer.
Back in ’41, at the outbreak of this man-made madness, the relentless advance of the Germans 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 one 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, became slaves, starved, then were offered a meagre crust were we to become Hiwis. As war raged, and through the eventual necessity of our captors, we were finally reluctant soldiers of the Fatherland. Tolerated by the German, 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, 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. But 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, one searingly hot Summer day, death and the accompanying sweet stench just 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, murderous chase across our country still numbered hundreds of thousands on either side, there had been millions on the start line. A generation’s dead and dying flower 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 been explicit. I couldn’t lie to you, but I thought many a day before conveying in this letter, the atrocities that I saw there. 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 uncountable cost of the Soviet victory stands giant over the ashes of the Wehrmacht. But still we fight. Still, the dead die.
In the bitter year that elapsed since, our skeletal company fled, ever further West. Sometimes, it was a comfort to me, for 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 be shot. Harbouring one of the most hated Hiwis, a cold bullet may have been the best they offered you. No, death is in my shadow and I’d never lead him home.
I’ve betrayed both sides, although I chose neither. To you, my love is now poison. Even discovery of this letter would be a bullet through your pretty head. That is why I write, but will never send. I comfort myself that maybe, just maybe, you hear my words now. Maybe, you heard my footfall as I passed your door. Maybe the approaching Russians will also pass by. I pray that they leave you to live and love again, My 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 that 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 in 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.
I will close my eyes and smile. For repose brings dreams of you. Dreams are all I have left now.
Overhead, Russian shells land on the West bank and a few German guns reply. In the cold light of flares, I shut my eyes and drown out their sound as I whisper your name.
“Katrina.”
