Red Love (5 page)

It was gray, damp, and cold on the morning of February 27th. The four hundred and fifty men peered out at the fog and ate breakfast.

Woodhouse, constantly smiling, briefed the officers. He said to Sammy, “You stay behind and if anybody remains in the trenches, shoot ‘em. Then come over.”

At 6:45 a battery of Republican artillery briefly opened fire, but at the Americans instead of at the fascists. They dove for cover, cursing and screaming.

Seven o’clock arrived, without the air force or the tank company. The men looked at each other. Machine gun slugs pounded into their sandbags.

Woodhouse kept looking at his watch. He phoned Pohoric and asked about the air and tank support. Pohoric said there would be a short delay.

Pohoric phoned Woodhouse a few minutes later and asked why the Americans had still not attacked. Woodhouse again asked for help. He said it would be hopeless without support from the flanks. Pohoric ordered him to move the men out. Just then three Republican planes flew overhead and dropped a light packet of bombs nowhere near enemy lines.

Woodhouse blew his whistle, and the men scrambled up the trench wall. Woodhouse waved them out. As he waved, a bullet broke his shoulder in five places. The dead and wounded lay everywhere. Those who were unhurt hid behind olive trunks and fired at the enemy trenches.

The attack was over within ten minutes.

The wounded lay immobile, waiting for the stretcher-bearers who could not get through the enemy fire. The snipers kept firing. In no-man’s-land bodies caught fire; the wind carried the smell of burning flesh.

When Sammy finally climbed over the top with his bayonet, he saw them: the newly arrived young comrades from Brownsville, all dead, piled on top of each other. Abe was in the middle. Sammy crawled in behind them, and he could hear the bullets hammering an inch above him. Sammy lay there terrified from noon to mid afternoon.

Then the freezing rains came.

The chill of fear and the chill of the rain.

Sammy overcame his terror and made a dash to pull in one of the wounded men. The trench was filled with bleeding, vomiting, coughing men, and with corpses. Many of the wounded drowned in the bottom of the trench in puddles of red mud and ice water. The exhausted men stepped on the wounded and the dead or fell upon them as they slipped in the ice and mud.

They waited for medical care and food. There was none.

The men cried aloud and sobbed and shook with rage. And yet they could not help thinking as they stared at their comrades in the bloodied water, “Better him than me.”

Sammy Kuznekov and a Franco-Belgian, Robert, slid down a hill, filed up another hill, and down to the cookhouse where they found two men, Stahl, the cook, and Koch, an officer. They were both drunk.

“Why didn’t you bring the rations up front?” Sammy asked them.

“Well, nobody came,” the cook said.

“Give me the food for the battalion.”

“Hold on,” Stahl, a blond Minnesotan with a moustache, said. “I heard there were a lot of casualties. I gotta know the exact figure.”

Sammy stared at him. “How many rations did you prepare for today?”

“Four-fifty plus.”

“
Well
,
that’s exactly what I want.”

“Now under brigade rules you only get rations for each man you got.”

Sammy picked up his bayonet. “Stahl, you’re gonna give me the food. I’m not gonna carry it, you’re gonna put it on your mules. And you and Hill are coming with me—”

“Please! Don’t take me!” Stahl cried.

“You bastards, I’ll blow your heads off. Do you know that most of the boys are dead or wounded?”

“Well we don’t know, we have no records,” Stahl said.

Fuck you,” Sammy said. “I want you to load up your mules with two barrels of rum, if there’s any left after you bastards got through with it. Plus the cognac. And all the goat chops—”

“You can’t order me. I’m a lieutenant,” Koch said.

Sammy put his bayonet to the man’s stomach. “You’re gonna be a dead lieutenant in a minute.”

The men loaded up the mules with the bags of food and drink.

It took more than an hour and a half for Sammy and Robert to get back to the men. He could hear the moaning, and in the trenches the wounded wailed in pain.

He passed out the rum and goat chops and the men drank and ate them like the elixir of life.

Whenever they heard a cry, Sammy and the other survivors tried to locate the man and drag him in. But many of them were too weak to carry the stretcher cases. “Look,” Sammy said, “two of you guys take a wounded man between you and let your body heat try to keep him warm.” They crawled under the blankets of the wounded to give them warmth and protection from the rain until the stretcher-bearers came,

The stretcher-bearers arrived at daybreak, when most of the wounded were dead.

Before they arrived Sammy and the others took their little half-tents (they hadn’t had time to build them) and put them over themselves. There were no holes to crawl into. They passed out on the ground.

They awoke at daybreak and peered over the top. Dead bodies were strewn everywhere in the trenches.

Sammy passed out the remaining food and cognac.

The surviving eighty men made a mass grave for the dead. They dragged the bodies from the trenches onto a spur and placed rocks and earth on top of them.

The dead were not counted or identified.

Sammy looked around at the furious faces. There was only one officer left, Stern, who had been a sergeant in the U.S. Army. Sammy went over to him. “Kuznekov, don’t come near me. I don’t want
any
command here. From now on I’m just a plain fucking soldier. Because this is a slaughter that no army would permit and I don’t want any part of it. So I’m just a soldier, man.”

Sammy led the men to the first-aid station, a kilometer behind the lines. A group of Russian cavalry, former Cossacks with lances, approached them.

Sammy said in Russian, “Devil take you, why are you pointing lances at us?”

“Oh!” the first man said. “He’s one of ours.”

He said to Sammy, “We’ve received orders from the brigade to bring all of you in.”

They were taken to the brigade in the field. Most of the men were so exhausted they lay down on the ground. Sammy and eight others stood. Pohoric suddenly appeared with General Krauss, a German.

“You Americans are a goddamn disgrace,” Pohoric said in English, and added in German to Krauss: “They’re nothing but shit.”

Speaking in Russian, Sammy said, “Comrade Commander, that isn’t true. Do you know that we’re the only remnants of the entire battalion?”

“Well, it’s too goddamn many,” Pohoric said. “You guys came here to play with your social theories about revolution. You don’t even know basic principles. Soldiers must learn how to die! And I’m going to teach you, friends. I’m making an example of you.” He turned to Krauss and said, “Arrest all the men who are standing.”

The men were taken to the wine cellar. Sammy and the eight other men were separated from the others and locked up. Exhausted and almost delirious, most of them screamed with delight when they saw the huge jars of wine. They drank and laughed and reeled and threw up. Sammy did not drink. He sat silently in a corner.

General Krauss came down to visit them. Krauss was a typical German military officer: tall, very well built, and clean cut, with glasses. He stood straight as a ramrod. He greeted the nine men with a smile. He handed them a pack of cigarettes.

Sammy refused.

“How come?” Krauss asked.

“Young Communists don’t drink, smoke, or screw around,” Sammy said, looking at him steadily.

“Oh,” Krauss said. “I see.”

Krauss paused. “Remember, whatever happens, be proud.”

He turned to the others and added, “You will all be sentenced to death. And I wanted you to know that this is nothing personal. This will be an objective trial. In fact, I can personally assure you that the balance of your subscriptions to the
Daily Worker
and other progressive literature will be transferred to your families in the States.”

The men had stopped drinking. It was very quiet in the room. Krauss continued. “Listen, this is a revolutionary necessity, so please act correctly. Be solid Communists.”

As there were no questions, Krauss put the package of cigarettes on the floor, waved, and marched out the door.

The nine men were taken upstairs to a high-vaulted cave lit by sooty lamps and candlelight. They saw their own shadows on the walls and heard their comrades below in the basement, laughing and retching and throwing up the wine. General Krauss sat hunched over a little table raised on a platform with a group of judges: the Spanish commissar, who knew only Spanish; the French commissar, who knew only French; the Russian commissar, who knew only Russian; and the Bulgarian commissar, who knew Russian well. Four interpreters sat beside Krauss. Pohoric sat off to the side.

The men waited in the flickering light for the trial to begin. The minutes passed, and many of the men sprawled on the floor and began to snore. Sammy, sober, remained alert.

Krauss began to speak in German. After each sentence, the first interpreter translated into Spanish, the second into French, the third into Russian, and the fourth into Bulgarian.

Krauss said, “Comrades, the reason these Americans are so weak is that they do not have any proletarian history whatsoever, whereas the German working class, the European working classes have a mighty proletarian tradition developed over the centuries. It’s simple. These poor Americans are not individually culprits—”

Sammy raised his hand.
“Tovarishch”
Sammy said, “look, you’re trying a group of Americans. The language of America is English. Now the least any court could do is provide an interpreter for the defendants. Am I asking too much?”

“Ach, not important,” Pohoric said, wriggling his fingers.

But the jury conferred for a moment. The Bulgarian addressed Sammy. “Look, you understand Russian. That’s enough. We’re not going to cater to you damn Americans.”

Sammy leaned down to the other men and told them what the Bulgarian had said. He had to shake some of them to make sure they heard him. “Aw, fuck this shit,” said Rob Mason, a steelworker from Youngstown. “Let them get it over with.”

Krauss cleared his throat and continued. “Comrades, I was contrasting the measly American working class with our splendid German workers. The German progressive tradition goes back to the
Bauern-Kriege,
the peasant wars. As early as the sixteenth century and the time of the Reformation, the peasants and artisans of Germany formed their own militias and fought against the city bourgeoisie,
yah.
That, comrades, is tradition. Let me describe for you the nature of the battles throughout our glorious German history that illustrate my thesis.”

Krauss spent an hour and a half on his illustrations, pointing his finger at the Americans, concluding his sentences with
“Yah!”
and occasionally stamping his foot, making the candles shudder. Some of the interpreters also stamped their feet. The men beside Sammy were snoring, and from below in the basement, he heard chairs thrown and dishes breaking and the roar of voices drunkenly shouting.

“Viva el ejercito popular!”

“Viva las Brigadas Internationales!”

“Viva la victoria final!”

“It is illuminating, comrades,” Krauss droned on, “that the German working class and the German general staff were one and the same, for one reason, holding to the current ideological perspective: it was in the interests of the bourgeoisie, and in the interest of the nobility to keep the motherland united,
yah yah yah!
You get it? The only elements that stood for German unity were the peasants and workers of Germany! This advanced consciousness continued all through the eighteenth century.”

Whatever Krauss was saying, Sammy noticed that each interpreter diluted it further until little of his meaning, such as it was, came through. Thus, the Spanish translation was: “Krauts are all pals, yah yah yah! They stick together, always, Bolsheviks and Stalin’s goody-goodies. So get on the wagon and push!”

The French version went: “The
boche
bastards are all the same. What else is new?”

Sammy thought, Well at least I’ll live until morning at this rate. Yet he too had trouble staying awake.

“And at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, dear comrades,” Krauss continued, “there were young revolutionaries who later formed the German general staff. Up until 1848 it was only the revolutionaries that wanted a united Germany. It was the
Fichtebundler,
because Professor Fichte believed in a just state. Fichte,. Fichte, Fichte, comrades! Remember Fichte! Fichte can be considered the father of German nationalism and German socialism all in one! Fichte was a 1 Hegelian, and it was Hegel who believed that in order to bring about social justice, you must have a social state. And that social state, must be a
strong, a very strong,
advanced state, which is the state of Marxism. In all of these phases of history, the German working class took a progressive part.

“And what did beloved Hegel say? He said world history occupies a higher ground… . Moral claims which are irrelevant must not be brought into collision with world-historical deeds and their accomplishments. The litany of private virtues: modesty, humility, forbearance, and philanthropy, must not be raised against them. … So mighty a form as the State must trample down many an innocent flower—crush to pieces many an object in its path.
Yah ha hah!”

A very tall Soviet general, Pashin, walked into the room and looked around. Pashin sat down beside Sammy. Krauss droned on. Sammy realized that Pashin had to wait for the Russian translation, which followed the French version. That took some time, since it was translated into Spanish first, and Sammy could understand it immediately. What the hell, he thought, and leaning over, he interpreted for the general. “Regarding then the
Fichtebund,”
Krauss continued, “many of the German nationalists, especially the Prussians, escaped from Germany,
yah.
Let us not forget Scharnhorst,
yah,
let us not forget how he advised Pavlov, the commander in chief of the Russian Army who fought against Napoleon at the battle of Borodino. How Scharnhorst advised Pavlov about every move he made before and after the battle—”