Red Snow

There were no more deafening gunshots, no more blood-curdling screams of anguish and no more need to stay in the cave where he had hidden the entire morning. Cautiously, Leo glanced out onto the fields of Kursk. There was no sign of life. The Germans seemed to have overpowered his troop and stormed towards Moskva. He thought of his daughter in Moskva. It would be her fifth birthday in 3 days and he wanted to go home. But now the Germans were advancing. He had joined the army to protect her, but he hadn't found the heart to fight. Even as his comrades were selflessly fighting the Nazi army, he had run into this cave as soon as the first shot had been fired. Leo cursed himself over and over again. His family was in danger, just because he hadn't mustered the courage to kill. It was all his fault, he thought. It was his  fault that supreme Generalissimus, Comrade Stalin would lose the war, his fault that his homeland would fall to it's ruin. He was the Soviet's biggest coward and he knew it.

A friendly bark woke Leo from his silly, self-castigating trance. He bent and petted Czar. Czar, the Leonov family's dog, was a trusty West Siberian Laika who had followed Leo to the frontlines and had never left his side. He stepped out onto the fields and remembered the last time he had visited Kursk. He had vivid memories of playing with his father in the  serene golden fields. Today, those golden fields had been reduced to a ghastly hue of white and red as the blood of his fallen comrades seeped into the snow. Leo wandered about, trying to assess his situation and hoping that he would just step on a landmine and end his misery. He was all alone in a deserted taiga, hundreds of kilometers from home and with no one alive to help him out.

He moved around in a trance-like manner, still dazed by the events of the morning, searching the fields with a hope to find someone alive.  He swallowed painfully as he went past the mangled corpses of Starshina Berezutskiy and Lieutenant Kirichenko, highly respected veterans who had inspired hundreds of youngsters like him to stand up for the nation. He came across the body of a German soldier who was carrying a massive backpack. Tired and thirsty, he probed into his dead enemy's supplies, hoping to find some water. Instead, Leo stumbled upon a queer alien-like mask. Unaware of it's use, he stuffed it into his own backpack hoping that they would forgive his cowardice if he returned with some secret enemy combat gear. Suddenly, he heard  Czar barking excitedly. He ran over to find a German soldier wedged between a rock and a pile of snow, but still alive!

The kindhearted Leo pulled the young German out of the tiny crevice and wiped the blood off his face.

The German spoke fluent Russian.

"What is your name, friend?"

"Call me Leo. How come you speak Russian?"

"My name is Hans. My mother was Russian. But she died when the Allies stormed my village."

"I'm sorry"

"I must head back. Thank you, brother. Life is short. Enjoy it"

"Take care, comrade"

Refreshed by the feeling of interacting with a living human again, Leo began walking eastwards with czar at his heels while Hans went West. Suddenly a strange, ticking capsule landed in the snow next to him and he saw Hans running away, at a very high speed. He had never seen such a capsule before but the ticking noise and the gas in the cannister ensured his worst fears. It was a bomb. Hans had deceived him. "Life is short. Enjoy it." He now realised why Hans had said that. The cursed German had exploited Leo's kindness and returned the favour with a nerve gas bomb, something Leo had only heard rumours of as it had never been used in battle before. After two seconds of harmlessly ticking in front of a paralysed, shell-shocked Leo, the bomb finally exploded. The noxious fumes rapidly engulfed Leo and Czar. In a heroic gesture that demonstrated both selflessness and presence of mind, Leo yanked out the mask he had previously collected and fitted it onto Czar's muzzle. He knew now for sure that it was a gas  mask developed by the Germans to protect themselves from nerve gas.

As the fumes entered Leo's body, he began vomiting and spitting blood. Czar pressed his furry body onto Leo. "You never liked the rain, Czar, you won't like tears either." Saying so Leo gave Czar a final embrace, the tears and blood raining onto the dog's fur.  "Save yourself, Czar. Go away, Czar. Dasvidanya, Czar." Leo's removed a family photo from his pocket and stared longingly at it before his body began convoluting frightfully. After 20 seconds of unimaginable pain, the convolutions stopped and ended the suffering of Private Sergey Leonov, who embraced eternal darkness with a smile on his lips.

Over 500 kilometres away, in a little cottage in Moscow, a little girl was drawing a picture of a man with a dog. "Look Mama, I drew Daddy and Czar!" Mrs. Leonov embraced her daughter and prayed for a letter from Sergey.

With some difficulty, Czar managed to  pull out the mask with his paws. The gas had cleared. He went over to Leo and licked the blood off his friend's face. He then probed the snow around for a few minutes until his acute sense of smell finally detected what he had been looking for. Czar had accompanied Leo in military training and he knew what landmines smelt like. After letting out an eerie, requiem-like howl as though he were trying to reach out to Leo up in heaven, Czar made the leap of faith with all his paws landing onto the landmine's trigger points with precision. He wanted to play with Leo again. He could finally rejoin Leo in a better world up there where there would be no war.

- Rtr Aman Vasavada

Rotaract Club of NM College