Chapter 1014: No Longer Tormented

On the outskirts of Moscow, at a small, unremarkable farmstead, the morning was as bright and sunny as ever. Although the distant, hazy rumble from the ends of the earth could be heard from time to time, everything here still maintained its peace and tranquility. At least the war had not yet reached this place. The last time a foreign army had passed through here, it had been in Napoleon’s time.

Possessing the widest and deepest strategic depth in the world had always been a point of pride for the Soviet Union. This was something other countries could never hope to emulate, just as in peacetime, these great powers envied the small countries for being “small boats that are easy to turn.” Don’t just envy how those small countries are so united and their people so easy to mobilize, because those small countries are, at the same time, envious of the great powers’ vast lands, rich resources, and large populations.

But after the tanks of the Third Reich had stopped in Ukraine and had completed their mission of defensive counter-attack, Moscow was no longer an unattainable illusion for Germany. After precise calculations, the German military had already grasped the maximum range of its blitzkrieg. The entire German army, like a precision machine, was, without the slightest error, using the rhythm it was best at to fight the war it could most easily win.

A peasant woman of about 55, carrying a huge pitchfork, looked at the woods in the distance and frowned. Her two sons and one daughter had all joined the Red Army. Even her poor husband, who was already nearly sixty, had also taken up a rifle and had gone to defend his home and country.

So the only one left in the family who could work, or rather, the only person left, was her. She needed to do the heavy farm work herself, to avoid losing the vast swaths of crops that were about to be harvested.

Unfortunately, the war situation before her made it impossible for her not to worry. The lack of news from her family was already enough to vex her, and the news she had gleaned from passers-by had made her even more anxious. The German army had already fought its way to the area north of Moscow, and was only a dozen or so kilometers away from her. This was the news she had received a day ago from a passing army unit, and that unit had been in a hurry to get to the Ivankovo Reservoir defense line, to stop the German army from crossing the reservoir and heading south into the Moscow Oblast.

Soon, that muffled sound, as if the earth were being beaten by a giant drumstick, came again. The peasant woman looked uneasily in the direction where she had heard the German army was, thought for a moment, and finally put down the farm tool in her hand and hurried back to her home.

After all, this was already wartime. She had long since packed up all the valuables in her house and had hidden them under a few floorboards that had been hollowed out in her home. If she were to run into any trouble, she could, at the fastest speed, take the most money and flee this terrible place.

The woman, having hurried home, stuffed the few pieces of bread from under a plate into her mouth, and then turned to get that bundle, and then to hide in a safer place. She had heard that the south and west were already the front lines. Only by heading east was there a glimmer of hope.

That premonition that had made her so uneasy just now washed over her heart again. Before she could even get her bundle, she heard a series of urgent knocks on the door. At a time like this, the sound of knocking was so abrupt, it had given this poor peasant woman a fright. But the urgent knocking did not stop. On the contrary, it became faster and more dense.

The peasant woman had no choice but to give up her plan of getting her bundle. After composing herself, she walked to the door and pulled it open. She then saw a group of Soviet infantry. Some were wearing steel helmets, some only a fur hat. In short, it was a group of soldiers, covered in blood and dust, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher.

They wasted no words, but pushed the woman aside and, with a flurry of hands, placed the wounded man on the floor of the room. A few men in their leather boots clomped up the stairs, their feet making a thudding sound on the floor.

“Do you have any medicine?” the leading Soviet officer, a bandage wrapped around his shoulder, asked, leaning against the wall, panting. He spoke to the peasant woman, who was stunned by the sight of the blood and what was happening. “Do you have any medicine here?”

Crash! Before the woman could even answer, a large Soviet soldier, carrying a machine gun, smashed the window of the room, stuck the dark muzzle of the machine gun out of the shattered window, and aimed it at the street in front. His movements were so natural, as if he had not even seen that the owner of this house was still here.

“Hey! I’m asking you, do you have any medicine here?” the leading Soviet officer said, sounding a little impatient. The groaning of the wounded officer at his feet was indeed easy to get on one’s nerves. He shouted, pulling the peasant woman from her shock at the broken glass back to reality, and then looked with a bloody gaze at the only unlucky woman in this room who was not a soldier.

“No… no!” the peasant woman quickly waved her hands. She didn’t know why these people had rushed into her house and were so wantonly destroying and trampling it. After all, weren’t they all Soviets? Why were they treating the civilians of their own motherland like this?

“The Germans crossed the Ivankovo Reservoir this morning. This is the front line now. We’ve been chased all the way from the reservoir defense line by the German tanks, so this place is now our Soviet front line!” the leading officer said. This was the longest sentence he had spoken since he had entered the room, and then he closed his mouth.

Another soldier walked past the peasant woman and kindly reminded her, “Get out of here, quick! In half an hour or a few minutes, a large number of German troops will be here. We’ve been ordered to defend this position to the death, but you don’t have to die here.”

At this moment, a soldier came running down from the stairs, in his hand was the scarf that the peasant woman had hung on the wall. “I found this, Comrade Captain! See if it can help stop the Comrade Commissar’s bleeding. There’s nothing in this room. They’ve already set up a sniper’s nest on the second floor.”

“That’s my scarf,” the poor peasant woman squeezed out a small, feeble protest. Unfortunately, her words had not even faded before these soldiers, who had not taken off their shoes after entering the house, had, with a flurry of hands, tied the scarf around the wound of the officer on the stretcher.

“Huh?” As if he had heard something, the soldier who was pressing the scarf on the bleeding wound turned his head and looked fiercely at the peasant woman.

“Nothing… there’s a little less than half a bottle of vodka in the kitchen. I hope it’s of some use,” the woman said, pointing to the kitchen. She then tactfully shut her mouth.

“Get out of here!” the officer said again, and then paid no more attention to the original owner of this room. And this poor old woman, after looking at the floorboard that was being pressed down by the stretcher, let out a helpless sigh, turned, and pushed open the door of the house she had lived in for decades.

As she walked out of the house, this old woman looked back at the woods in the distance. The birds there were flying up in flocks, and the distant trees had begun to sway slightly. It was clear that something was coming from that direction. From the very beginning, she had felt that something was not quite right in that direction.

In the short time she had been in a daze, a German Panther tank, painted in field camouflage, had crashed through a branch and had charged out of that patch of woods. As a peasant woman who had never even seen a Soviet tank, that giant, steel-made war machine was indeed enough to have a shocking effect on her.

Crack! Not far from the old woman, a Soviet soldier, hiding behind a low wall, held his Mosin-Nagant rifle and fired at the German tank. The bullet struck the tank’s frontal armor and was deflected far, far away. It was only after this gunshot that this peasant woman had discovered that the entire village was already garrisoned with Soviet soldiers.

That German tank clearly had no intention of being polite to the Soviet troops in the village. The machine gun at the front of its hull immediately began to roar, and the tracer rounds, striking the fences and bushes at the edge of the village, sent the wood and plants flying in a shower of splinters. Soon, the bullets had struck the low wall where the Soviet infantryman who had opened fire was hiding. In an instant, sparks and brick dust were flying everywhere.

The peasant woman saw a Soviet soldier, who was hiding in a drainage ditch, waving frantically at her, his mouth shouting something. Because of the gunfire, she could not hear clearly. She once again turned her gaze to that low wall, which was now wreathed in a cloud of white smoke. She saw that the Soviet soldier, unable to bear it, had charged out from behind the low wall, hoping to escape to a safer place.

Unfortunately, the hail of bullets had no intention of letting him go. The bullets quickly pierced his stomach, and then his shoulder and thigh. In an instant, he convulsed and fell, moved slightly on the ground, and then was still.

The splattering blood and the shining tracer rounds finally made the peasant woman realize that her current situation was very dangerous. And so she forgot about the Soviet soldier in the ditch who was waving at her, paid no attention to the gesture that was telling her to find cover, and, turning, she began to run in the opposite direction.

At the same moment, a second German tank, which had charged out of the woods, aimed its thick gun barrel at the old woman’s house in the village. With a loud boom, a high-explosive shell slammed into the vicinity of the corner of the house.

The shattered stones and bricks from the explosion flew everywhere. The house was instantly enveloped in a cloud of rising dust. The nearby Soviet fire immediately went silent, and the battlefield was filled with a pervasive white smoke and dust.

A Soviet soldier, carrying his weapon, ran, crouched low, across the road in the village. At his feet was the body of the peasant woman. Shrapnel had hit the poor woman, letting her no longer be tormented by this terrible war…

Advance chapters at Nightjar Reads · nightjarreads.com