The first attack and the first oath
Finally, a real combat. I'm lying in a small ditch, there's no-one anywhere near me, bullets are whistling over my head. Yeah, this is a real combat. It wasn't like that before. When I joined up, I was first sent to an artillery battery, we just kept sending shells out into the blue without ever seeing what we were shooting at. Later on, in a mortar unit, I dropped mines into a mortar barrel, they flew off to explode somewhere, but I still didn't have that feeling of actually being in battle. A week ago, during another unit reconstitution, I concealed my artillery and mortar experience from everyone and got assigned to an ordinary infantry company. And now - my first attack. The German trenches are about five hundred meters in front of me. For now, we've only made the first run at them, and the enemy fire is not yet very thick. I ran forward a bit quicker than most and wound up out in front all alone. I'm feeling quite proud of myself, mind you, my nearest comrades - Fedor on the left and Petr on the right - are still somewhere behind me.
Now Fedor crawls up almost past me. I have to get ready for another run towards the enemy. The bullets are flying much thicker now, the body isn't quite as willing to get up off the ground, but I have to make it get up. I note a little hillock towards which I'm going to run, and the spot of cover I'm going to crawl into once I get there. I focus, tense up and uncoil like a spring. Bent over like a cripple I run forward, get to the hillock, drop to the ground. The fire gets even more intense. There's a strange feeling that the bullets are nipping at the greatcoat on my back (this feeling was very accurately captured by the singer B. Okudzhava - "…The bullets kept hitting our backs so hard…" - L.Veger).
Fedor and Petr somehow keep up with me. I'm going to have to get up and face the bullets again. How can I do this? But now, I don't have a choice - Fedor is already ahead of me. I crawl a few meters to the right on my side, like a giant crab, get up, run forward. On the fly I spot a small patch of cover ahead, behind which I can drop down again. It's someone's corps. I run to it, drop down - made it, somehow. I'm still alive, and still ahead of everyone. Time to relax for a bit.
Suddenly, my brain is filled with existentialist thoughts and memories from my schoolboy days. At 17 or 18, many young men succumb to thoughts espoused by Byron and Lermontov's Pechorin that all life is useless, ordinary, that you're just treading down the same road as millions of others before you, that there will never be anything truly new in your life. And now, these dark thoughts are dancing around in my head as I huddle behind a corpse as bullets whistle over my head. For some reason, I broke out into a fit of nervous laughter - I think that if anyone had seen me just then, they would have thought I'd completely lost it.
As I regain my composure, I make the first oath I've ever made in my entire life. Lying on the ground, pressing myself into the dirt, my head resting on a corpse that's shuddering from enemy bullets, knowing that I will soon have to get up and risk my life yet again, I told myself: "No matter how bad or how difficult life gets, I will never, ever think of ending it voluntarily. I will strive to hold on to it with all my strength. I didn't make it into this world just to leave it so soon."
Petr is still to my right. Fedor has disappeared. I have to get up. How can anyone do this? For the umpteenth time, I regret throwing away my helmet during a forced march a couple of weeks ago - we were throwing away everything we could then, helmets, gas masks, bayonets, grenades, bullets.
Without lifting my head I glance to the left - Fedor is still missing. But others have almost caught up with me on both the right and the left. It's time. I tense up, bring my arms and legs under my body, crawl a bit to the side, wait a few seconds, then jump up and keep running.
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