Tin Sky Read Free

among the “pots”, it’s safe to suppose they’reanti-tank mines, or else they’d have been blown to smithereens. She was still ranting when I left.
    Little does she know. Far from being her “little soldier”, in a month I’ve been able to do most of the planning for the regiment, to be called Cavalry Regiment Gothland, bearing as its insignia the leaping horseman of my 1st Division (not the horse’s head like Regiments Middle and South), plus the clover leaf of its parent unit, the 161st ID. Out of the 27 officers slated to fill the commanding positions, I have thus far managed to pull together 18, from the many places where they ended up after our 1st Cavalry Division was disbanded late in ’41. Except for one, so far all readily expressed the willingness to come. The senior non-coms (Regimental Sergeant Major Nagel foremost among them; I’m ready to insist with Gen. von Groddeck – and even Field Marshal von Manstein – that his presence is imperative) are in the works. As for the troopers, I trust my officers will do a good job of recruiting. It’s inevitable that a number of locals will be necessary, both as scouts and interpreters; four of us officers speak Russian, although I’m the only one technically qualified as an interpreter. I pointed out to Lt. Colonel von Salomon that it is preferable to have ethnic Germans. If we fight under our byname for Ukraine, “Land of the Goths”, it is only right. The problem is, a good number of Russia’s Germans have been transferred to the Warthegau. Others have fought for the Soviets and were made prisoners: these I don’t trust and I’d rather do without. Cossacks are much prized, but I don’t particularly care for their methods. I am and remain a German cavalryman: swashbuckling, sabre-rattling and hard drinking aren’t what I’m looking for. Am I being difficult, at this stage of the war? Well, I may be difficult, but it is my regiment, and within reason it is at my discretion (and good judgement) that it must come into being.
    Driving from the Bespalovka camp back to Merefa, Bora changed his mind about Krasny Yar, and decided to take a detour there. He travelled along a dirt lane, straight and white like a parting in the hair, between fields of new grass where larks sang andquails called out with their three notes, clear like water drops. Were it not for the skeletons of Soviet trucks and the cannibalized remains of other vehicles by the roadway, it would have seemed a peaceful landscape. Silos and low roofs, long metal sheds, stables and tractor shelters pointed to the presence of collective farms, mostly abandoned during the fighting at winter’s end. Only stray dogs lived there now, which German soldiers, depending on their mood, shot dead or took along as mascots. Occasionally, farm boys stared from behind the fences. Krasny Yar lay beyond, an unidentified spot on the horizon no road sign pointed to. Bora had driven past it when going elsewhere, without stopping.
    When he arrived, the impression of dislike he’d had driving through earlier was confirmed. The destitute hamlet and the wooded patch where corpses had been turning up bore the same name, yet the place wasn’t beautiful – krasny – at all, and neither was it enough of a ravine to call it a yar. A piece of sloping ground at most, at the end of a dirt road passable only as far as a fork that diverged widely. On the left, the trail died amid the handful of crumbling huts. On the right hand, what trace there was had ceased to exist, ploughed by tanks that had left behind track marks as deep as graves. The edge of the woods bristled a couple of hundred metres beyond, where the earth rose into a weary swell and then sank.
    Bora’s rugged personnel carrier could negotiate the tracts of even space remaining across the fields, but seeing German soldiers in the village, he stopped at the fork, and after surveying the edge of the wood through his field glasses, he left the vehicle and walked