Page 28 - Excerpts from the diary

me until they sort things out, and create a whole commotion around me. That would be the most unpleasant thing.

I hear someone walking nearby. A group of people. Ours or someone else? They are talking quietly. Now they have passed very close by
in their groundsheets. Their voices recede, and the people with them.

It rained last night too. After the film I found a large empty dugout-tent and fell asleep there. At dawn, however, soldiers began
dismantling it and woke me, and rain poured through the openings they made. So, like a homeless wanderer, I cannot find a place for
myself anywhere in the division.

Chief of Staff Bondarenko threatened to remove me from the ration list. He demanded that I go once again to the head of the personnel
section. When I went there, the man began swearing, called me undisciplined, and told me not to come to him again until he summoned
me. Bondarenko said he would speak with Antyufeyev. I very much did not want that, because Antyufeyev might give me a bad
reference—the battalion commander had requested one—but by now almost everything has become indifferent to me. I am ready for
anything if only I can escape this trap and not fall back into Semyonov’s hands, where I will be completely cornered. On the Dniester he
had tried senselessly to ruin me by assigning me three soldiers and a mortar under enemy artillery fire, while at the same time, out of fear
of the enemy, forbidding me to fire it.

It is time to go to dinner, and I still have not written to Aunt Anya and several others.

A few days ago I was pleased that I had not fallen ill. Almost everyone around me was struck down by the general malaria and other
diseases. The dampness, however, has affected me too. Influenza and a cold have stayed with me for several days, but I carry them on my
feet because I have lost the habit of lying down. During the day I never like to lie idle; I try to fill my free time with work—literary
scribbling. A great deal of time, however, is taken up by my habit of rearranging and looking through what I have written and the other
contents of my bags. The disorder and cramped conditions damage my papers and are among my greatest difficulties.

22.10.1944
Poland. The village of Hanna.

Yesterday Nikolai and Captain Romanov left. They went on, while I stayed at the post office. I wrote several letters there. I bought
postcards, and then discovered I had no money left—I had spent everything on the road. I had to find a way out. I went into the first hut I
came to and offered the owner a small brush and some soap. I asked twenty rubles, but he bargained and I let him have them for fifteen. I
repaid all the money I owed for the cards, but then several medical majors came and demanded that cards be sold to them too. I had to
buy only fifty cards for ten rubles. Five rubles remained in my pocket.

I crossed the border with these majors. They had travel orders, three vehicles, men, and property. At the border post, however, the people
I had joined pointed out that I had merely attached myself to them on the road. Fortunately they checked only documents, not bags, and
since the entire division had passed along this road, they let me through at once.

In Włodawa our people were everywhere. I ran into the Fifth. I had acquaintances there among both officers and soldiers, and they told
me where divisional headquarters was. In the operations section I found Shchinov, the topographer, and others. Shchinov is already a
major.
“Hello, First Lieutenant,” he said to me, then immediately stopped short when he saw my insignia.

“I haven’t been promoted,” I explained, and told him what had happened to me since I was sent to the 902nd.

“You’re incorrigible. When are you finally going to start fighting? You’ll see: they’ll send you to the riflemen and you’ll be killed there.”

I answered that I would not go back to the riflemen, but his words hurt me, and my heart tightened painfully. Shchinov has two stars on
his chest and the Order of the Patriotic War. He considers himself a fighting man, while to me—who have actually been on the front line
and will be there again—he says, “When are you going to start fighting?” But my chest is bare, and in that sense he is right. I learned the
route and left.

The shops are full; they have everything. I took out my money and wanted to buy several pencils—they cost forty rubles—and a sheet of
paper for twenty-five rubles or zlotys. I put my capital back in my pocket and decided to get out of the town quickly before the hunger
awaiting me there finished me off. But already on the outskirts I suddenly remembered that I had left behind the bag containing my
diaries. I had to return to the operations section. Shchinov met me in the street and shook his head reproachfully. That is what my
absent-mindedness leads to! Fortunately the bag was still where I had left it, and, delighted to have it back, I hurried carelessly along the
road of my route.

The divisional bank was not there either. I was almost a pauper, if not for the two stars on my shoulder boards, which still gave me a
considerable advantage here.

On the country road I stopped near some of our vehicles. They were supposed to leave at any moment, but the drivers would not take me
without the major, the head of the column, and I had to wait.

In the distance lay the town I had left, with its Polish name and its beautiful Polish women—proud to the point of repulsiveness.

I remember an encounter with an old Polish woman in Western Ukraine. She was seventy, toothless, her face flattened and made ugly by