In the Crosshairs

Chapter 3: A New World

"Go, go, go!" the 46th infantry commander shouted.

Alexander and the rest of the soldiers took the queue and scrambled out of the back of the truck. His division had been dropped off a few miles from the northern most part of Stalingrad on the Volga river, where the fighting was minimal. Fog and light snow enshrouded most of Alexander's periphery, leaving him unable to see anything more than several hundred feet away from him. Most of what he could see were trucks stretching from a small grey outpost into the main city. They were overloaded with equipment, carrying tons of ammunition, weapons, health packs, and bean soup.

From the other soldier's murmurs, Alexander could tell they were miles away from any real danger. Yet still, almost every five minutes, he would look up at the grey skies see a stuka bomber circling in the air space above Alexander. He would sense that he was mere seconds away from being directly bombed, but moments later, the airplane would sharply nosedive toward the city.

The plane would then begin dropping bombs, one after the other, in 3 second intervals. He could visualize the flying limbs and dismembered bodies that would result from each explosion.

"46th division, out! Move closer!" the commander roared. 

Alexander looked down to double check his ammo clip was securely in his rifle. Then, he followed his comrades on their sprint to the city.

After a few minutes of running, Alexander began to hear the noises of war. The spattering bullets of the DP-28 machine gun, the thunderous boom of cluster rockets, and of course, the earsplitting cries of pain.

The noise of the battle overwhelmed Alexander. He had known Stalingrad to be a flourishing, bright city from his time there as a young man. He thought about how the city used to be. The churn of the factories, the laughter in the streets, and the bird chirps from the trees adorned Stalingrad with a mystical vibe of mysterious happiness. Now, all he could hear was death, violence, and misery. 

Alexander finally reached the outskirts of the city after a few minutes of running. What he saw in front of him shocked him. Entire buildings had been evaporated and transformed into steaming piles of rubble. Wounded veteran lay everywhere, with missing limbs, eyes, and other body parts. Vehicles, armored tanks, and panicked soldiers wandered aimlessly around the city, looking for some form of protection or salvation. The rest of his comrades immediately ran to their stations, heeding the orders of the bellowing officer. Alexander simply stood there, transfixed upon the scene in front of him, when the officer walked right up to him. 

"To the left, get in the outpost! Kill as many as you can!" the high-ranking officer screamed in his face. 

Alexander could hear the feigned tone of assertiveness in the officer's voice. Yet in his eyes, Alexander could see only pure fear, an expression of terror quite familiar to him. It was the look in a deer's eyes, who was seconds away from death. It was the fear he saw in his father's eyes, when Alexei spun around to see Alexander being maimed by the wolf. 

The officer beckoned toward a tall, grey building, almost twenty stories high and made entirely of concrete. There was no writing, nor any decoration on it. Just a massive, slab of a toaster that Alexander assumed was the outpost the officer was hollering about.

Alexander entered through the half-open door at the building's ground level. He peered around and saw loose papers and cupboard doors flying around. There were pencils, backpacks, and pictures of families lying on the ground.

He looked inside one of the ground building rooms. It was clearly a classroom that had been converted into a makeshift hospital unit. The blackboard at the end of the room hung over a white stretcher. On top of the stretcher looked to be some large mass under the blood-soaked covers. Alexander didn't dare to peel back the bedsheets or even look further. There was nothing he could do to save or help anyone.