Leningrad 1943: Inside a City Under Siege by Alexander Werth Page A

any rate its park with the old oak trees, and the forest beyond, where I had learned to love the Russian countryside – had remained in Russian hands.
    It was misty and from the watchtower that morning one could see only the faintest outline of Kronstadt, or rather of the dome of Kronstadt Cathedral. I looked at that dark green coastline, stretching to the west. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing to a large dome-like shape rising from the crest of the hill, a long way down the coast. ‘That’s the church of Peterhof – or rather what’s left of it,’ the captain said. ‘It’s about all that’s left of Peterhof,’ he said bitterly. ‘The palace is burned; the park destroyed, the fountains either sent as scrap to Germany, or mixed up with the earth. I was there not long ago. It’s a horrible sight. And how our young people liked to go out to Peterhof on holidays, and spend the day in the glorious park among the fountains. Do you remember Samson? These swine sawed Samson in half and sent the bits away as scrap.’ Of course I remembered Samson, the greatest of the Peterhof fountains, finer than anything I had seen in Versailles. And I remembered the puddles on the gravel path around Samson, and the strange, intriguing, slightly slimy smell of the Peterhof ponds and its fountains: a damp, fresh, bright-green smell among the dark-green old lime trees of the park; and the beautiful, baroque palace in white and blood-red stucco. ‘You cannot imagine with what reverence our young people tip-toed along the parquet floors of the palace,’ said the captain. ‘There was no reverence for the wicked old Tsars in this tip-toeing. But there was reverence for this great piece of our national heritage. It belonged to us, to our culture, don’t you see, and now, now there’s nothing but rubble; and it’s the same everywhere,’ he added angrily, pointing along the horizon to the left. ‘There are the heights of Pulkovo right in front of you. We are holding them! But there’s nothing left of the Observatory, nothing. Smashed to smithereens. And further to the left are the heights of Duderhof; that’s where the front goes further inland. But Pushkin (formerly Tsarskoye Selo), with the great Catherine Palace, and beyond it, Pavlovsk, with the most beautiful park in the world, are still on the other side of the front. The Catherine Palace has been more or less destroyed; certainly everything inside the palace, the famous amber room and all – has been carried away, and the beautiful old park at Pavlovsk has simply been cut down by these swine.’ It had indeed been an exquisite eighteenth-century park, with lakes, singularly like that of the Bois de Vincennes, with all sorts of little Temples of Love and Grecian pavilions. One could feel how bitterly all these Russian soldiers of Leningrad felt about this destruction. ‘ Svolochi  – the filthy scum!’ the captain concluded.
    To the south towards Pushkin and Pavlovsk, the front was six kilometres away. Further west, on the shores of the Uritsk inlet, the front was no more than three kilometres distant. Here they had been stopped literally at the gates of Leningrad, and for two years they had not been able to advance another step.
    ‘He’s a good fellow, the captain,’ said the sturdy major, in an aside to me. ‘One of our best people. Quite recently he knocked out a German observation post just over there, near the Pishmash – one of the hardest places to get. Knocked it out with a direct hit.’ ‘Haven’t they tried,’ I asked, ‘to knock you out?’ The major laughed. ‘Sometimes they fire several hundred shells a day at us, but it doesn’t do much good. They hit the tower in several places, but have never been able to knock us out. Of course, we’ve had splinters, right up here, and some dead and wounded – the captain himself got a splinter in his head just the other day – but he’s carrying on as you see. Aren’t you, Comrade Captain?’ The