Not One Step Back

As a youth, I spent a great deal of time away from home. It was a nice home, with nice furnishings filled with loving people. But, me? I preferred to spend time in the wild with my grandfather, my Deda. To be honest, I don’t know why he enjoyed my company. I was always too slow, too short, too physically weak.

We didn’t talk much. He spoke, and I listened. I learned by watching him mend fences, gut animals and make fires without fuel. I remember once, I saw a Calvary unit riding gallantly through a ravine near the edges of our lands; galloping in lock step, tee-totaled, swords glinting in the mid-day sun. Quite an impression on a young mind. Deda caught me staring and saw what I held in my hands. “What is that? Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?” Knowing it was a toy, I just shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe that man on that pale horse could be me,” I thought.

We spent hours in the frigid Russian abyss hunting for food and clothing for our bodies. Traps for fur to trade. Even as a youngster I knew these things, were in essence, life. We killed animals to feed and clothe ourselves. Other animals feed on what we left behind, and mother nature consumed the last to fuel tomorrow. But to a boy, these are just things you do because, you are told to do so.

I remember once I got separated from my Deda. There are very few words to describe Russian winters. Eye brows frozen; your lips seal shut if closed for too long, and even snow blindness. As a boy, I used every fighting spirit, and bush knowledge I could muster. I could hear Deda as though he were beside me that very instance. “Clear your mind boy, push all else out. Right, now only you and death exist. Now on your feet, boy! Time to get warm. Dig deep within yourself, to the core of your being and absorb its energy. Quit crying boy, it’s time to be a man.”

Even after they found me a few days later the old man still wouldn’t look at me. I can still see his weather beaten face, those unmistakable piercing silver-grey eyes cutting me in half when he glanced my way. An icy white beard wraps snuggly around his rosy face. The tips of his mustache lasso the wind when his nostrils flare.

“Come here boy, let me have a look at you. Show me those toys you’re always playing about.” I opened my arms with a few trinkets. A toy soldier, a lavender ribbon from a girl’s hair I’d grown fond of, and a locket of Мама.

The old man gruffed, “Throw them on the ground.”

“Bu-b…”

“Do it, Alexi! Give me your right hand, boy.” As I offered my hand he said, “this knife once belonged to my grandfather and his before him, and now it belongs to you. Then, he reached down on one knee and began stirring about in the ground; uttering some words I couldn’t make out. And, then, he arose… smearing my face and thumping my chest with frozen earth, mud and snow. “This is mother! Feel your father’s strength in this hallowed ground. This is your mother! This is your Father! Fight like tigers for these things!”

Today, our unit is entrenched like a tick around Stalingrad. Blood and soil, earth and mortar is indeed home. This is our Mother, every square kilometer of it. Let the German mother’s weep for their lost this day, for today we fight for what belongs to us! Not one step back.