Underground Soldier (11 page)

I realized what I was witnessing: The War Zone. The Front. It was right here.

I ran back to our hiding place and threw back the boughs. Martina had bolted up to a sitting position, her eyes wild. Just then the ground shook again.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted. “Tanks! Down that way!” I grabbed my knapsack, Martina slung on her satchel and we ran towards the mountains — and, we hoped, away from the Front.

* * *

I had lost track of the dates, but by the time we got to the mountains, it had to be mid-December. The days were more often snowy than wet. Sheer ice, rocky hills and deep crevasses made travelling so difficult. The entire mountainside was criss-crossed with paths, some surely made by escaped slave labourers who were lost, and others made by people from the area who knew where they were going. But how could we tell which was which? As we hid in the trees or dug our way into holes with branches to cover us, we prayed for luck.

Beyond the canopy of firs, we could hear airplanes. More than once, we ducked for cover as a fighter plane strafed the treetops, shooting blindly as it barrelled overhead.

We were increasingly hungry as our food ran out, as well as cold and frightened. I began to doubt the wisdom of trying to escape to the mountains. Maybe we should have stayed in that village with the woman and her son. But staying there would have felt like giving up. Even though the war seemed to be following in our footsteps, I had to get back to Kyiv to find my father.

We were so close to the battle areas that we’d see escaped Red Army soldiers, with disintegrating boots and frostbitten cheeks, limping past us as we hid. From time to time we would also see German soldiers who had given up, and escapees from the camps. Young people wearing homespun clothing would pass by too. It was as if the entire world had decided to escape to the mountains.

Once, in the blackest part of night, our way was completely blocked by a raging creek. We walked along it, hoping to find a spot without treacherous rocks jutting upward. We were both shivering by the time we found a spot that looked narrow enough to cross.

I grabbed a long branch from the ground and plunged it into the water to see how deep it was. Close to the bank, it was just a few centimetres, but it dropped off steeply after that.

“How can we cross?” I asked Martina. “We’ll be soaked, and once we’re soaked, we’ll freeze.”

“Keep those precious boots of yours dry,” said Martina. “We’ve got to go in barefoot.”

She was right. I took off my boots and socks and stuck them into my knapsack. I rolled my pants up while Martina took off her ragged
postoly
. Holding each other’s hands for balance and courage, we stepped into the creek together.

The shock of cold pierced through to my bones. At the halfway point, my foot plunged down a hole and I smacked hard into the icy water. My knapsack filled up and its weight pulled me down. I flailed in panic, until all at once both my feet touched ground. I tried to stand, but the current was too strong, and the knapsack pulled me down again.

Then the weight of it disappeared.

“I’ve got the knapsack,” said Martina.

I managed to get my balance. Martina struggled to hold the knapsack as the current fought her for it. I reached out and grabbed one strap. Together we heaved it onto a jagged stone on the other side of the creek and it stayed there.

We groped our way towards the other side, slipping dangerously with each step. I fell several times, as did Martina, but finally I pushed her onto the shore. I could barely claw my own way out of the water.

We pulled our sopping shoes back on and stumbled to our feet. Martina gripped me by the elbow and we trudged forward, exhausted, but happy to be across the river.

As we stumbled into the woods, a firm voice said, “Stop.”

Chapter Sixteen
Vera and Abraham

The soldier’s military overcoat was an unfamiliar design. I watched, shocked, as he unbuttoned it and wrapped it around Martina, completely enveloping her. A second soldier looked like the perfect Nazi, with his ice-blue eyes and short blond hair, but he took his coat off and wrapped me in it.

What kind of Nazi would do that for a person like me? The heat from his coat felt uncommonly hot.

“Sorry about this,” he said, taking a piece of cloth from his pocket and blindfolding me with it. Then I felt one strong arm gripping underneath my knees and the other under my back. He clutched me close to his chest and walked through the woods on sure feet.

I blacked out.

* * *

In my half-awake state, I tried to get my bearings. I was tucked into a narrow bed. Water trickled somewhere close by. The air smelled stale and moist, and my head throbbed. I opened one eye. I was in a dim room with walls of whitewashed wooden planks, cramped with three cots in addition to mine. The only light came from narrow slits in the ceiling high above. The rest of the ceiling was branches.

Across from me lay Martina. A train track of fresh stitches, glistening with blood, ran across her cheek. Her feet, which poked out from under a rough blanket, were wrapped in gauze.

“Martina,” I whispered, sitting up woozily. “Wake up.” Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

The third cot was empty, but in the fourth, below Martina’s feet, lay a sleeping Wehrmacht soldier who looked to be in his teens. One arm was in a cast and his face was much cleaner than his muddy uniform. A thick square of gauze covered much of his neck. Blood seeped through the gauze, slowly making a wet circle.

Where were we? A place for
Germans
to recuperate, obviously. What would they do to us when they realized we were runaway slave labourers?

Just then a tired-looking woman stepped through the doorway. Her outfit was a combination of Soviet and German military uniforms, but the
postoly
on her feet were peasant wear.

She knelt by the German’s cot and lifted the gauze at his neck, mumbling something under her breath in Ukrainian.

I felt entirely confused. If I knew for certain which side this woman was working for, I could play along — get myself and Martina out somehow — but nothing added up.

She left the room, but moments later came back with a tray of medical instruments. I watched as she removed the old dressing from the soldier’s neck. A long wound had been stitched, but the middle part was still bleeding. She washed off the blood with antiseptic and dressed it again with a fresh bandage.

She cleaned the tray and set it on my cot, then looked at my forehead and said in Ukrainian, “It seems that your wound needs dressing as well.”

My hand shot up to my forehead. On my left temple — just where it throbbed the worst — was a thick wad of gauze.

“I am sorry to say that we had to shave off some of your wonderfully wild hair in order to close the gash.”

I managed to ask, “Who are you?”

“You can call me Vera,” she said. “Field doctor for the Red Cross.”

“Where are we?”

“An underground hospital,” she said.

I looked up at the slits in the ceiling and suddenly realized why they gave so little light. It wasn’t just the branches covering them — the slits themselves were as narrow as my little finger. All at once I felt like I was smothering.

Vera put her hand on my forearm. “Relax,” she said. “It’s normal to feel closed in at first.”

I lay back down on the cot and stared at the slits of light, trying to breathe slowly, trying not to think about the fact that I was so deep under the ground.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” said Vera as she gently pulled off the old bandage on my brow. “Stefan and Danylo found you just a hundred metres from the battle zone. Even if you and your friend had managed to survive your plunge in the creek, you would surely have been shot.”

Just then a rhythmic tapping sounded from beyond the room. Vera’s eyes went wide. She grabbed a gun and strode out. I sat up. That’s when I realized I was dressed in loose cotton trousers and a shirt — neither of which was mine. My head was still pounding, but I had to see what was going on. I crept over to the doorway and poked my head through. The next area was a long, dark corridor with a series of doorways. An underground stream trickled down a groove in the far wall and escaped through a hole in the corner. How smart that was, to choose an underground spot because of its built-in water system. Maybe this hospital was close to the creek that Martina and I had nearly drowned in.

At one end of the long corridor was a set of steep log and dirt stairs leading up into a tunnel. A patch of light and a whoosh of winter air streamed from above.

As I watched, the heels of Vera’s
postoly
appeared from the tunnel. She was walking slowly down, backward, her ankles trembling to keep balanced. A moment later, I understood why. Her hands clutched one end of a makeshift stretcher. When she was nearly all the way down the steps, the other end of the stretcher became visible. Gripping that end was the kind-eyed soldier who had rescued Martina. On the stretcher was the blond soldier who had saved me. His face was still.

I scrambled back to my cot and lay down, expecting them to bring the injured soldier into this room and lay him on the fourth cot, but when they didn’t, I listened, trying to figure out what was going on.

Five minutes. Nothing.

I crept back out. No one was in the corridor. No light or air came through the door at the top of the stairs. I tiptoed over and looked up the tall steps — the door was closed and bolted.

I was about to go back to my room when I noticed light coming from one of the doorways along the corridor. I stepped quietly past my own door and poked my head through the lit one. An operating room! Kerosene lanterns that were strung from above cast the room in a bright yellow light. A man whose eyes looked bruised with fatigue worked frantically to cut through the fabric of the soldier’s pant leg with a large pair of scissors.

“I’ll assist as soon as I let Danylo back out,” said Vera, hurrying out the door.

The medic looked up and saw me. “You,” he said in Ukrainian. “If you’re conscious enough to stand there and gawk, you can help.” He jerked his head towards a tray of instruments. “Get some scissors. Help me cut these pants off before this man bleeds to death.”

I grabbed a pair of sewing shears and stared at them for a moment, my mind filling with the memory of my mother, sitting in a comfortable chair before the war, snipping off the frayed bits from the cuff of Tato’s dress shirt with scissors just like these.

“Don’t just stand there,” said the medic. “Help me.” He mumbled something under his breath in Yiddish.

Now I was truly confused. Who were these people and which side were they working for?

I stepped quickly over to the injured soldier to see how I could help. The medic had cut away the pant leg from the bottom to the knee, but was having difficulty ripping it open the rest of the way. I held the scissors in my armpit and reached over to loosen the man’s belt buckle. Once it was open, I was able to snip through the heavy waistband and the triple layer of material around the pocket until the entire leg was exposed. At first it was difficult to see where the injury was, there was so much blood, but Vera came back with water. She poured it over the area, washing away blood and exposing a deep black hole in the man’s thigh muscle.

“I’m glad to see you haven’t fainted yet,” the medic told me. “Vera, give the boy the water. He can irrigate while you assist me.”

If I’d had something in my stomach, I might have thrown up as Vera held the wound open with metal instruments and the man dug around with surgical forceps, looking for the bullet. Thank goodness the soldier was unconscious. I poured bits of water, making sure those two could see what they were doing. My head throbbed and I felt like I would faint, but I breathed slowly and concentrated on what needed to be done.

“Got it!” said the medic, triumphantly holding up a bullet glistening with blood. “No surprise, a German bullet.”

Vera smiled, then reached for a needle and thread. “I’ll take over,” she said, giving the wounded area a swab of antiseptic.

“Now we keep it dry,” said the medic, handing me a wad of gauze.

The two of us kept on blotting away blood as Vera stitched, first the deepest layer of muscle, then the next. I watched her deft movements and steady hands.

An image of Lida flashed into my mind, needle and thread poised, eyebrows crinkled in concentration. Her skilful fingers had earned her one of the safer jobs at the work camp. Was she still safe? I could only hope … I shook my head and her image disappeared.

When the wound was fully closed up, the medic wrapped it with tape and gauze.

“Stefan was very fortunate that the bullet didn’t shatter the bone,” he said, wiping sweat off his own brow with a clean rag. He turned to me and held out his hand. “You can call me Abraham,” he said. “Surgeon with the Ukrainian Red Cross.”

The Ukrainian Red Cross! It was separate from the Soviet one and separate from the German one. I knew that for certain because there was an active chapter in Kyiv during both occupations — Soviet and Nazi. These people were not working for the Germans. They wouldn’t care if Martina and I were escaped slaves.

“And what should we call you?” asked Abraham, almost as if he had read my mind.

I shook his hand firmly. Should I use a made-up name or my own? I told him he could call me Luka.

“So you survived the trek — through the borderlands, I take it? — all the way to the mountains,” said Abraham. “Luck was on your side.”

“Perhaps a little bit of skill as well,” said Vera. “When I was unpacking his knapsack, I found things that showed me he knew how to survive in the forest — dried puffball mushrooms, wild foods.”

At first I felt a twinge of anger that Vera had searched through my knapsack without my permission, but I couldn’t very well stay annoyed. Martina and I were strangers to her, yet Vera had saved our lives at the risk of her own. She was within her rights to minimize any risk to this location — even if that meant searching through my private things.