A Minor Miracle

In the face of his physical handicap and a life of near monastic solitude, combined with fifty years as an officer of the Red Army of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the tall and angular General Aleksyi Polenko still considered himself a man of discipline. It was discipline, his father had taught him at a young age, that was primary to an officer's success. His father had also said that discipline should be primary to a soldier’s natural inclinations as well.

On a gold chain around his neck, eighty year-old General Aleksyi Polenko still wore the German round that had shattered his right knee in the winter of 1944. It represented more for him than a symbol of luck: it served as a constant reminder to himself of the immediacy and the impartiality of death. His life-long restraint as a soldier had been what led him away from the loathing and self-denunciation that had accompanied the loss of his leg, and had been what lifted him out of his dark and disturbing thoughts after the war came to a close.

Using a cane made of strong Siberian oak as a supplement to his artificial leg, General Aleksyi Polenko, as was his custom, slowly walked the perimeter of the army base’s central square, watching young soldiers march up and down the quadrangle in the bright morning light. The stiffness of their postures always reminded him of the day he turned six, the traditional first day of a boy’s long and often arduous path toward manhood.

A general in his own right in those days, his father, Constantin Polenko, had ordered him to stand at rigid attention—without supervision—for hours in the cold darkness and pouring rain outside their family’s home near Victory Square in Leningrad. No matter that the cobblestones in the street were growing sheets of ice, the general had a point of soldiering to make with his young son.

Looking down from a brightly lit second floor window, his father had sat in his study at his perfectly ordered desk near the warmth of the fireplace, reading from the translated works of Immanuel Kant. Smoking his pipe, he had glanced out at the boy on occasion, using the stem of his hand-carved meerschaum bowl to silently correct the boy’s posture from where he sat observing.

General Aleksyi Polenko remembered hearing his mother, Katarina Yelena, berating his father later that same cold November night. Having been silent long enough in the matter, she had carried her soaking wet and shivering son upstairs and toweled him briskly until he was rosy and dry. Then she had helped him on with his nightshirt and tucked him into a goose-down bed covered with pure white pillows, scarlet quilts and fresh linen sheets, and hinting of her husband’s tobacco.

General Aleksyi Polenko had never forgotten his mother’s display of affection that night, nor did he forget his father’s stern but simple lesson. It was not just about a boy’s new found understanding that a soldier never abandons his post, it was also about a disciplined soldier standing bravely in defense of the homeland, no matter what battles heaven and earth—or man—may wage.

* * *

Half a century earlier, on a fateful and cold morning in the winter of 1944, the Nazi high command had, in the drive north to Moscow, deployed a division of tanks accompanied by a battalion of troops and an artillery column across snow-banked fields and through the stark forests west of Stalingrad. Himmler’s orders to his commanders were to take control of that city through what he and his generals had perceived as a sparsely defended approach.

Somewhere deep in the forest, between the farthest reaches of the old city and the advancing German machinery, Captain Aleksyi Polenko and his bedraggled band of leather tanners, carpenters and farmers lay waiting. Drained by frigid winds and running low on ammunition, all of heaven and earth seemed to be falling apart around the inexperienced thirty year-old captain and his men. Ordered to sit tight, he and his company had been charged with defending a desolate countryside ripped apart by bullets and shells, while at the same time being swallowed by heavy snows and blistering ice.

The roar of tanks echoed between the trees, the sounds seeming savage to Captain Aleksyi Polenko, and at times the guttural shouts of Nazi soldiers floated through. With bullets threatening and the tired and dirty faces of the old men and young of his charge turning to him for reassurance, he knew it was time to steel his troops.

“Pick your targets,” he cautioned. “Aim as carefully as you do with your deer, and waste not a single shot.”

His company of men had come from everywhere and nowhere: bustling cities, nearby villages—some had come on foot over the plains of their motherland that were covered in the summer with wheat and barley. All were huddled together now though, in shallow ice-slickened ruts and behind boulders and trees thickly skirted with snow, shooting at the unknown and hoping with unspoken words each day they would live to see nightfall.

Against the numbing cold, Captain Aleksyi Polenko and his soldiers wore layers of rags under their coats and uniforms and kept their blankets draped around their shoulders at all times. During the lulls in fighting, their rifles required constant movement of the bolt action, to prevent them from freezing up.

Discerning at last that his men’s hearts and minds were not in this wretched place, Captain Aleksyi Polenko knew that, without these most basic of commitments, the fight to save the lands of their fathers and mothers from the invading forces would be lost. He worked the cold bolt of his rifle in quiet determination, then grimly sent another unmindful German soldier to his death.

How could he reach men whose sole concern was how not to freeze? he asked himself. Or how not to die? Then, when he least expected it, a minor miracle stumbled out of the white-washed corridors of the forest to reveal itself.

Cradling his rifle in one arm and leading his bound prisoner at the end of a short length of coarse rope, Corporal Fyodor Goroshenko dragged himself through the angling snow and past the guarding eyes of his comrades. His quick gulps of breath steamed in the frosty air and his coat was heavily stained at the shoulder with the frozen blood of a wound. The young, tow-haired German he led, a boy of no more than sixteen, was disheveled and afraid, his heavy, gray wool uniform torn and streaked with dirt and ice.

“My captain,” Corporal Fyodor Goroshenko gasped, yanking the young boy to his knees as he fell to the ground exhausted in the icy wind.

“A patrol,” Captain Aleksyi Polenko remarked to no one, eying the young German. “There will be others, no doubt.”

Kneeling at his corporal’s side amidst the whine of bullets and the blowing snow, he probed the young soldier’s wound, his ministrations those of a loving sasha. Shaking and alone, the German boy drew back from the enemy captain. In the hoary light, his were the eyes of a trapped and frightened animal.

“Sergeant Korobskii!” Captain Aleksyi Polenko suddenly yelled over the wind. “Find something to tend to our brave comrade’s wound! And move him away from the line.”

“Right away, captain,” Sergeant Korobskii answered. A red-haired and freckled giant of a man, Sergeant Korobskii slung his rifle across his back and, in one continuous motion, swept the unconscious corporal up in his arms like a feather, then hurried toward the rear of the storm-ravaged camp.

“Private Stolnyev!”

“Yes, my captain!” the compactly-built Stolnyev said, running to his captain’s side and kneeling close with his rifle in the tearing wind.

“Give this boy your blanket and, if there is any left, a cup of this morning’s soup!”

“But, captain,” Stolnyev protested.

“Do as I command, Private Stolnyev!”

As Captain Aleksyi Polenko lay in the spiraling drifts of snow trying once again to free the bolt on his rifle, he saw the young boy, under Private Stolnyev’s close and watchful eye, sit on the roots of a black elder tree, pull the blanket tight against the cold, then suck greedily at the cup of thin soup he held in trembling hands.

Mostly melted snow and shoots of artic willows and the occasional hare or bird, the soup was all Captain Aleksyi Polenko’s men could manage under extreme battle conditions. With the constant skirmishes and the high value placed on ammunition, it had been weeks since his soldiers had been near—much less eaten—any real food.

But here was the enemy, a misguided boy, sitting amidst their own camp and warming himself with one of their much-treasured blankets. And eating their soup.

Such a strange occasion, Captain Aleksyi Polenko thought.

There was nothing civilized left but to call it a minor miracle. Then, with that simple thought, he saw the framework of a plan emerging.

“Listen to me, comrades,” he called to his men. “It appears our enemies are filling their ranks with small boys to carry out their intended assault on the motherland. This means we have less to fear and more to hope for.”

Most of his men had stopped firing and lowered their rifles, and were peering at him with puzzled looks. The orchestra of screaming shells had gradually faltered to nothing, and the freezing snow had brought with it a surreal and momentary blanket of quietude.

“Come closer, men,” Captain Aleksyi Polenko paused, waving them into a huddle. “All their guns, large and small—and probably their tanks as well—are freezing, like ours. But many of their soldiers must now be mere boys. Boys who have not been weaned—as we have—in the ice and snow. These children, must be terribly cold and terribly hungry, finding themselves thousands of miles from warm, inviting homes and loving mamas and sashas.”

He pointed at the boy. “I can see from that one,” he went on, “that they are under-trained and under-disciplined. They cannot go for days and nights as we have, without the luxury of food or shelter. Here is what we must do—and do quickly—if we are to prevail.”

They gathered round, squatting near him in the snow and ice, and as he told them of his plan their eyes gradually focused, clear and shining. Then their shoulders squared and their heads lifted in anticipation and nodded in agreement.

Captain Aleksyi Polenko knew then that he had found their hearts and minds. Having done that, his plan, with their help, just might succeed.

Under strict orders, Private Stolnyev reluctantly tethered the captive boy to his waist, and his captain and the other men shouldered their weapons and blankets and what little ammunition they had managed to conserve. Traveling under cover of darkness and the unremitting storm, Captain Aleksyi Polenko and his men quietly and carefully searched the surrounding hills and woodlands for the berms and huts of the many woodcutters and hunters they knew habited these lonely stands.

According to the captain’s instruction, the soldiers knew their duty was to not only gather them together and solicit the knowledge and aide of these hardened men and women of the woods, but to requisition cutting tools of any nature: knives, cleavers, saws, axes—anything with a handle and a sharp edge. Furthermore, they were to enlist the strengths of the various woodcutters they had found in clearing and cutting large quantities of wood, then building great and small fires.

Utilizing the skills of the collected hunters, they cut branches into spears and stakes and poles, then followed these experts in executing their craft of assembling and using traps to capture all forms of wild game.

These measures, they understood, when finally completed, fulfilled the second stage of their leader’s remarkable plan. Now they were now primed and ready to bring about the third and final stage.

* * *

The next morning, working side-by-side in the snowfall with a powerfully-built woodsman dressed in buckskins, a fur hat and a fur robe, Sergeant Korobskii distributed arms-full of logs and branches, cut by the seemingly tireless teams of woodcutters they had recruited, among several huge blazing fires. Two more men were doing the same with smaller fires nearby, as well as driving yoked stakes into the ground at each side of the flames.

“This entire clearing must get as warm as your wife’s bed, Sergeant Korobskii,” Captain Aleksyi Polenko said, flashing his sergeant a salute and a smile. “Keep those fires blazing!”

As other of his men stood sentry in the heat of the tall fires, the captain walked to one side of the large clearing they had made in the snow-covered glen, not far from their former position. There, several more of his men plucked and cleaned the many birds that had been snared, then gutted and skinned dozens of rabbits, splashing blood and organs on the snow in their haste and excitement to get the meat on poles and into the flames of the cooking fires before it froze.

Guarded by soldiers nearby, woodswomen worked diligently at sectioning two of the huge deer their men had succeeded in bringing down. Covered in blood and quickly and expertly cutting away organs, skin and bones, the heavily-clad women pierced the large portions of venison with long, sturdy poles, then carried the assembled spindles to the fires and laid them across the yokes and flames for roasting.

All around, the air filled with the heat and the smoke and sweet aromas of roasted meat. Captain Aleksyi Polenko clapped his hands with joy, realizing only then that the sounds of the enemy’s guns and tanks had stopped completely.

My god, he thought. Their equipment must be freezing. The Germans could not fight, he knew, without their guns, and presumably, could not move their tanks or fire their cannons.

Then, in the hanging silence, he heard a single sharp report from far off to his left.

It was at that same moment a bullet struck his knee. The same moment he forgot what it meant to be disciplined, and the same moment he fell to the ground, screaming and in blinding pain, clutching his leg.

Crouching and running, Sergeant Korobskii dropped his stack of wood and moved quickly to his captain’s side, then ripped away the bloodied fabric over his knee. Tearing long strips from his blanket, he swiftly wrapped the wound tightly, slipped a short branch he had stripped of its twigs beneath the leg to serve as a brace, then knotted the strands tightly over the top.

“Keep to your duties, you mangelings!” Sergeant Korobskii turned and screamed at the others. “We must not fail!”

With closed eyes and shallow breaths, Captain Aleksyi Polenko pushed the searing pain to the back of his mind. If his men were to succeed with his plan, they would need their sasha—their protector—to stand with them, to lead them. He had to be on his feet, where he could see them and they could see him, and they could take their courage from his erect form.

“Stand me up, Sergeant Korobskii,” he muttered, humiliated by his own state of helplessness and obvious lack of discipline. “Stand me against a tree where I can observe.”

“Captain!” the sergeant exclaimed. “What about your wound?”

“I will decide,” he snapped. “Now, help me stand.”

Nearly fainting from the intense pain as Sergeant Korobskii helped him rise and move, Captain Aleksyi Polenko struggled to position himself against the ice-coated tree. He had an excellent view of the clearing and the perimeter, where he knew they would be coming—very soon—and the cold was numbing his wound and beginning to ease his ache.

And they did. When it began, Sergeant Korobskii admitted to his captain later that he had never, in the entirety of his service to the motherland, seen anything like it.

One by one, young Germans soldiers, most of them no more than boys—as his captain had suggested—slowly drifted into the clearing and the warmth of the fires, with their weapons raised over their heads in surrender. As well, they held their faces high, openly sampling the air, innocently following basic instincts and reliving mouth-watering memories.

“Captain! It is happening!” Private Stolnyev cried, running and swinging his rifle to point in different directions at the approaching soldiers. “It is really happening!”

“Did you doubt me, Andrei Stolnyev?” Captain Aleksyi Polenko murmured, sinking in the falling snow, stiff and painful and pleased, to the cold ground at the foot of the tree.

* * *

Holding a telegram in one hand, Sergeant Korobskii stood by his captain’s hospital bed and saluted smartly. He wore a new uniform, was cleanly shaven and his pink face glowed.

“Sasha?” he said softly. “Are you awake?”

Captain Aleksyi Polenko opened his eyes and squinted at his sergeant. Days before, doctors had examined his wound, had found red darts of gangrene branching out all around it, and then had removed his leg just above the knee.

He could move about on crutches now, but with the dizziness he could only stand for a few minutes at a time. During the night, the bandages and stitches made him restless and crazy.

He indicated a seat next to his bed, then pulled the covers back and swung his leg out and sat up. As Sergeant Korobskii perched on the edge of the chair, Captain Aleksyi Polenko grabbed his shoulder and stood, balanced himself, then donned his robe and plopped back down.

“What have you there?” he asked, staring at the drab piece of paper clutched in his sergeant’s hand. “Have I been demoted? Reassigned to Murmansk? Tossed to groveling dogs?”

Sergeant Korobskii grinned and handed him the telegram.

“Nothing like that at all,” he said, “my…major.”

“What is this business? Major?”

A look of disbelief spread across his face as he read the carefully typed words. Captain Aleksyi Polenko and his company of irregulars were ordered to present themselves in Victory Square in Leningrad, to receive one of their nations’ highest military honors, the Order of the Red Banner. And he had been promoted—to major.

His plan, Sergeant Korobskii told him, had been recreated on several other battlefields— with similar results. The Germans had made it to Moscow though, on foot. They had willingly surrendered in Red Square, since their machinery stood frozen and abandoned in substantial numbers along the cold country roads of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The sergeant went on to relate that the Nazi soldiers who were retreating southward were reported to be dying by the hundreds, struggling through the freezing snow and ice to get back to Germany. Dropping rifles and ammunition belts along the way, he said, it seemed almost as if they had simply given up to the frozen motherland and gone home.

“Our generals, my major,” Sergeant Korobskii smiled, “are calling it nothing short of a miracle.”