The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich

Author:Svetlana Alexievich
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

Olga Vasilyevna

We took a big village. Some three hundred houses. There was an abandoned German infirmary in the building of the local hospital. The first thing I saw was a big hole dug in the yard and some patients lying in it shot—before leaving, the Germans themselves shot their own wounded. They evidently decided that we would do it anyway. That we would do to their wounded what they did to ours. Only one ward was left, which they evidently didn’t get to, didn’t have time, or maybe they were abandoned because they all had no legs.

When we entered this ward they looked at us with hatred: they evidently thought we came to kill them. The interpreter said that we don’t kill the wounded, we treat them. Then one of them even started to make demands: they’d had nothing to eat for three days, their bandages hadn’t been changed for three days. I looked—in fact, it was horrible. They hadn’t seen a doctor for a long time. The wounds were festering, the bandages were growing into the flesh.

Did you pity them?

I can’t call what I felt then pity. After all, pity is compassion. That I didn’t feel. It was something else…There was an incident with us…a soldier hit a prisoner…I found that intolerable, and I intervened, though I understood…It was a cry from his soul…He knew me, he was older, of course, he cursed. But he stopped hitting…He swore at me, “Have you forgotten, fuck it all! Have you forgotten how they, fuck it all…” I hadn’t forgotten anything. I remembered those boots…When they set up in front of their trenches a row of boots with cut-off legs in them. It was in winter, they stood there like stakes…Those boots…That was all we saw of our comrades…What was left of them…

I remember some sailors coming to help us…Many of them were blown up by mines; we had stumbled into a big minefield. These sailors lay there for a long time. In the sun…The corpses puffed up, and because of their striped jerseys they looked like watermelons. Big watermelons on a big field. Giant ones.

I hadn’t forgotten, I hadn’t forgotten anything. But I couldn’t hit a prisoner, if only because he was already defenseless. Everybody decided that for himself, and it was important.

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