The Accidental Anarchist by Bryna Kranzler Page B

minutes that our artillery seemed to realize that their range was too short, and stopped firing. I found out later that it was our commander, the man I had been about to kill, who managed to signal to them to cease firing.
     
    There was no further talk of a counterattack, because with the first beams of sunlight, hordes of Japanese rose out of the earth and, like a tidal wave, came rolling steadily toward us. Accompanied by queer blasts on a bugle, a roar of voices rose in a single word: “Banzai!”
     
    Our company disintegrated before my eyes. We turned and ran, stumbling heedlessly over the dead and wounded, alike. From time to time, we heard far behind us a hideous shriek, which I assumed to be one of our soldiers being sliced to death.
     
    After a furious, pistol-waving attempt to rally us, our commander was now running as fast as any man in the company. I had trouble catching up with him until suddenly he staggered. A bullet had torn through his neck. He tried to keep going, which was a mistake, because he ran right into an explosion that tore off part of his leg.
     
    I was closest to him, and instinctively picked him up and slung him over my back. At once, two men behind me shouted, “The dog! Let him rot!”
     
    As I stumbled forward, trying not to fall, he gasped, “God bless the Jews! Dear God, let me live, so that I may earn their forgiveness.”
     
    He babbled on like this, while my comrades, Jew and gentile, muttered behind my back, “Throw him down, the filthy dog! Hasn’t he killed enough of us?”
     
    They were absolutely right. Yet somehow, having done this much, I couldn’t just drop him. To a Jew, a baal teshuvah, a repentant one, is said to rank higher even than a man of lifelong piety. I didn’t know how literally one should take this, or even whether this only applied to Jews, and I was nagged by the suspicion that my commander’s repentance might not have been altogether sincere. But who was I to judge another human soul?
     
    With each step, his weight seemed to double, like some demon out of an old wives’ tale testing a weak man’s resolve. Although it must have been agony for him to talk, he plainly felt his life depended on keeping me reassured of how much he now loved the Jews.
     
    We stumbled past wounded men pleading with us either to take them along or to kill them. But none of us was able to think of anything beyond staying on his feet.
     
    I suddenly felt a bullet barely miss my head. When I turned, I saw that the company commander was dead. I didn’t want to see whose gun was smoking. I merely hoped that whoever did it, Russian or Jew, hadn’t been trying to kill me, as well.
     
    I let the commander’s body slide to the ground. His warm, sticky blood had soaked through my tunic. I tried to wipe it off the back of my neck before it froze.
     
    For the rest of that day, I could not look anyone in the face. Not even Glasnik, whom I was sure was innocent. After all my loose talk about killing the commander, not to mention my own halfhearted attempt to do so, I felt like an accomplice to the murder.
     
     

Chapter 9. This Way to the Firing Squad
     
    Our retreat from Mukden had finally lost some of its nightmarish quality of headlong flight. Mainly because, after weeks on the run with virtually no food or sleep, we were worn down to the point where we’d not only ceased to resemble an army but barely invited comparison with human beings.
     
    Meanwhile, Kuropatkin had now taken personal charge of stemming the tide of losses in the Harbin-Mukden sector. As was typical when a new man took over, Kuropatkin felt obliged to produce some immediate victories, regardless of the cost. In fact, his first order of the day was, “We will spare neither blood, nor treasure. All must be sacrificed for Emperor and Vaterland.” But he took one look at the leftovers of our battalion and had us taken out of the line and quartered in an abandoned village.
     
    That didn’t mean we were