The land flowed by the staff car’s windows as Major-General Zhivago was driven to Karachev, and the ashen smell of the Indian summer wafted from the open air as he lit up his fourth cigarette of the day. The driver constantly applied the brake as more walking wounded stumbled before the car, ambling away from the ruins of the town to the overwhelmed triage station. Yevgraf reflected on the glorious sunshine and the earthy brown soil of the Orel region, finely churned by the passage of shells, tank treads, and standard issue boots, while overhead the shturmoviks turned in the sky like heavy pike in a stream, scanning the ground below for prey. 

Around him, the trees burnt in odd hues, ignited by the red signal flares, while the cobblestones of the road were torn into random patterns, the road uneven and dangerous, but ultimately leading to the town. Yevgraf thumbed the leaves of his brother’s poetry collection, remembering his place within the tome, and thinking back to how he had used his influence to get his brother’s work published. Even now, a decade later and in the ruins of the very countryside his brother had been so inspired by, his poetry was to be found in the pocket of many an overburdened strelkov or officer. His brother would have cried to see the poetry fastened inside helmets, or buried amongst the constant flow of orders, propaganda and correspondence, which flooded the dugouts of the frontline. 

Karachev itself had been razed to the ground, but now the build up of tents and ammunition dumps gave the illusion that the town had been reborn, with all the shops and restaurants from before the war, the worker’s blue overalls replaced with dull and mudded khaki. The car stopped sharply once more as Katyushas drove across the general’s path, rolling towards the frontlines to continue the harassing bombardment, their sound a terror and a joy at the same time, an ode to the breakthrough at Orel and the turning point. Yevgraf could sense the outbreak of fierce optimism amongst the troops despite the harsh fighting from which they had emerged. “Here we are sir,” the driver noted, “Headquarters.” Yevgraf stepped straight onto the road, continuing past the skeleton of a Panther to the largest tent in the makeshift town. 

Colonel Batov looked up at the Major General, his eyes betraying his lack of sleep and the stress of the Stavka’s demands for constant reports. His wrinkled face altered with difficulty into a smile for an old friend. 

“Hard times, Zhivago.” He reached for the conspicuously half-empty bottle of vodka, while Yevgraf turned to the map on the wall, already out of date with the rapid advance. 

“And yet we turned them back, Sasha” 

“Yes… I suppose we did.” Batov paused for a moment, two glasses in his hands. “Still, the time for celebration is short indeed- already Zhukov seems to be hounding me onward. We are still finding people in the trenches that the fascists overran, or those that were simply left behind. I’m glad we found time to regroup.” 

“How many are missing?” The air hung thick with cigarette smoke. 

“Still too many to count. Officers have been hit the hardest though; I believe you know Gordon and Dudorov?” Yevgraf sighed noticeably. 

“Old friends of my brother. But I’m sure they’ll turn up. They didn’t survive the Gulag to die in the bloody Ukraine.” 

Batov laughed harshly. “Tell that to the penal troops.” 

The Gvardie troops didn’t bother to notice what would make civilians disappear when death waited at any moment. Many were openly praying as Batov and Yevgraf strode through the encampment, others following the ritual of cleaning rifles or Papashas, as the midday sun began its slow descent. Occasionally Yevgraf would stop to ask the men around him whether they had heard word of a certain “Christina, a scout.” Some replied that they thought she’d had a friend in the company, a girl called Tanya who had “turned up from nowhere” and attached herself to the company. She was the laundry girl, strong-willed and self made. Yevgraf turned to Batov. 

“I think I should meet this Tanya, Sasha. There are a few details about Christina I need to know.” The two officers walked past an immobile T-34, its crew sitting up top next to the infantry, serenading distant women with the unsubtle tones of an accordion, a musically minded lieutenant guiding the song. He broke off, seeing Yevgraf and fearlessly jumped to the ground. Walking up to the pair and pointing to his feet, he was interrupted by the screaming of aircraft engines as another flight of overburdened shturmoviks flew low over the smoking town, heading west. The lieutenant tried to talk once more: 

“I said I’m sorry I don’t have boots, Colonel, Tanya is still getting me a new pair from the quartermaster’s stores.” 

 “Why don’t you ask the quartermaster himself?” Yevgraf cut in. 

The lieutenant pointed to his legs and merely stated “He’s wounded.” 

“Could you get hold of Tanya?” Batov asked. “The Major-general wants to know about Christina.” The lieutenant nodded and turned on his heel, striding off into the press of soldiers. Batov talked of the lieutenant- shortly to be a captain- Alexandr, a young man from the Urals. As he described the reasons for his promotion, the lieutenant returned with a new pair of boots, bringing a young woman with a confident and defiant walk. Yevgraf looked into her eyes, and found himself looking into the past, to a time before the war, before the purges, to his brother’s death, when he had accompanied a graceful mourner, the last of her kind. 

“Is your name Tanya?” 

“Yes. What can I help you with, comrade?” The girl asked. 

“I heard you were friends with a scout called Christina, a former paratrooper?” The girl nodded emphatically. 

“Yes, we used to be friends, before she got killed.” Her voice exuded familiarity and kindliness, she seemed eager to help anyone despite her proud nature, just as the triage armband tied around her right arm suggested: a humanist surrounded by inhuman fighting. 

“Tell me about her.”  

As Tanya described Christina, Yevgraf saw a stoic, determined woman behind the very Slavic features, and the resemblance to Lara brought back memories of the early thirties, just after Yury’s death, when the graciously grieving woman had helped him arrange his brother’s affairs and clear his name, before disappearing into the streets. Curiosity got the better of him, and as the low rumble and thud of distant artillery sounded to the west, he asked her where she had come from.  

Her story of abandonment gave rise to a sentiment within him: a certainty. This was his brother’s daughter with Lara, the secret she had shared with him so long ago. He knew not what the future held, but he vowed that this last unfinished business of his brother must be sorted out. The girl would have an education; she would be reared as if she were his own. Yury had owned no earthly possessions for Yevgraf to take care of when he died, excepting his poetry, but now, Yevgraf saw in this young woman a true inheritance. Nonetheless, such fatherly notions as now appealed to him were out of place. The road to Berlin was still a long and dangerous one, and the country that his brother had loved was still partly occupied. For the moment, he would reveal nothing to her, but make sure she was safe until such a time as he could rest once more with his family. He bid her farewell, and as she left, he told Alexandr to take good care of her.  

Suddenly Batov emerged from the command tent, surrounded by his retinue crying: “To arms! We are called to battle once more comrades!” Amidst the cumulative roar of men and the braying of the machines of war, Yevgraf stepped into the car again, wondering what poetry his brother would have written on seeing so terrifying yet magnificent a sight as a brigade of silhouettes charging over the fields towards the setting sun.