Alena

Alena - Yelnya, near Smolensk

The radio said that they where making slow progress. That they had no need to worry. That they would be at Berlin by next summer. Reality was different. The army looked impressive enough, yes, but the regular broadcasts had a sense of urgency to them, a feeling that they weren't quite real, like the reader was heavily scripted and knew otherwise. Word on the street was that they came in iron beasts. different from the almost fragile ones, frantically manufactured around here. Roaring lumps of metal, churning the mud and snow beneath their tracks, spitting high explosives at anything that moved,accompanied by men barely worth the name, who moved with such swiftness and fought with such brutality that in Poland they called them szkop, a term previously used for a castrated ram. If they had been able to fight with such witty insults, they might have stood a chance, but their enemy had no sense of humour beyond the gnarled, twisted type of butchers and executioners. The type where you laugh when screams sound, when mother is torn from child and wife from husband.

The radio burbles and pops as the valves heat. I look up absentmindedly from the worn tabletop, shaken from my daydreams. Babushka stands near the window sill on which the device is perched, squinting at the dials. I smile, most old people are making the most of various chairs and firesides at her age, but no, she just brushes my off at the offer and says that an active life is the only one worth living. Even the grinding work in the factories, manufacturing the material of war doesn't wear her down. When a person from the census office came to count the workers, he commented that her sprightly determination was unparalleled in any other he had been to and she was making two or three persons worth of material. This all went out as propaganda and she unwittingly became the face of local industry, proving that you don't have to be young to be strong. To say she wasn't best impressed is an understatement. The only comment she had was that at least the owner wouldn't dare fire her now, despite his regular threats to do just that. Babushka is the stubbornest person I have ever met, so much so that she could give a mule a run for its oats.

A tinny voice suddenly blares. Emitted from the small speaker, these radios are common enough, produced to allow the masses to listen to the speeches of our mustachioed dictator, one Minister Joseph Stalin. Its him who reassures us that they have not got further east than Vinnytsia, in Ukraine and won't get further than Minsk at most. they further embellish these tall tales with a few scant truths, like that reserves are rushing to the front. You see them go past in lorries, looking like sheep sent off for the slaughter. More orders have come into the factories too. I work moving the finished tanks to the train station, the other end of the street. I drive and my partner for the day sits in the commanders seat and tries to stop me from driving into random pedestrians and errant cyclists. The factories make a small variety of tanks, like heavy KV's, BT-5s, T-35s and their slightly better sibling, the T-34-85. They are fun to drive, each type with their own quirks, like the BT needing a sledgehammer to get it into gear, but fun. each morning, I'm assigned a 'commander' and a factory to transport for. some tanks need intercom, some don't and it is possible to be kicked for directions. On those days I come back with bruised shoulders and a stiff and muddy back.

The anthem plays through the speakers. Speech over. the normal. They are gaining ground, but they will soon be fleeing for their lives, tails between their legs, broken and demoralised all the way to Berlin. Lies, just paper-thin lies. Babushka glares at the radio, unimpressed. Like us all, she hopes for the day when they tell the truth, even a scrap, almost translucent and battered out of shape to it looks like what they want us to see. Propaganda. Huh. Just a fancy name for lies.

As a factory worker making tanks, and therefore pretty much crucial to even standing a chance in this war of movement, Babushka gets better rations than most. As her granddaughter, I am forced to eat at least half of the extra. Its almost tradition, a friendly scrap over who eats what, insisting that the other gets more. What ever victories i score, she wins more. Tonight was the usual. She managed to slip me the extra she wanted me to eat and while arguing with her about it, I ate it.