1

Alex Greinke

English 101

Ms. Anthony

4-27-2014

 

Darkness. I thought I was blind, and then I realized my eyes were closed, upon opening them I see a sky filled with smoke. I felt something hard on my back, then I found out I was laying on concrete, and I stood up, finally taking notice of my.... environment. This place. What is this place? Where is it? When is it? Why is it that I'm here? A city. I'm in a city. Or a demolished city. It looks ancient ruins yet with signs of modern technology, or what's left of that too. Automobiles that have been burnt, the windows of shops shot out, power lines knocked over, piles of rubble surround the many buildings that look like they're reading to collapse, creating more rubble. The streets are littered with craters, bullet casings, buildings reduced to rubble, and a few blackened tanks. Dust flies through the air as the wind carries it to who knows where. The smell of gunpowder and charred metal is faint yet unsettling, especially being accompanied with this unnerving silence. The wind shifts, blowing its slight tempered air against my face, that's when I noticed the eerie smell of blood, smoked flesh, and- a building? Sixty feet behind me and 70 feet tall, the side of it, half way from the top has a large hole in it, possibly from an explosion or projectile. It starts to let loose more of its structure to the scarred earth, emitting its sounds of bricks tumbling and knocking against each other or anything blocking their path to the ground.

Pops. The sounds of popping are picked up by my ears from out in the distance. The pops go off one at a time, and then there are rapids pops. Wait... gunfire! Rifles and machine guns is what they sound like. Yes! That's what they are. Men shouting in foreign languages, sounds of the air being ripped and screeching before making an explosion.... Ah I remember where I am! The city of Stalingrad, it’s sitting on a river north of the Caucuses in the Soviet Union. It’s.... October, the 15th... I think and its 1942. I'm a Russian soldier sent here to fight in the defense of the city, and that's why I'm here. With my rifle slung over my shoulder and with only four bullets, I wander the lonely and scarred streets of this once... peaceful and.... living city. I have no other words to describe of what this city used to be. The loudest sound is the dirt and rubble crunching under my boots as I go along. The Germans started the destruction of the city in August and I haven't even been here for two weeks and it somehow feels like I been here long enough to conclude... that this was always the case for this city. Since coming here, I've witnessed fellow countrymen, soldier and civilian, die in the hundreds if not thousands by the Germans bombings and storms of bullets, hitting us with everything in their arsenal, all in the effort to capture this place for... whatever value Stalingrad holds.

As my body wanders, my mind begins to wonder, why exactly am I here risking my life? I was born in a small village, unscathed by the purges, 100 miles north of here that no one else cares about. Why do the Germans, no, why does Hitler insist on capturing this heap of ruins? The city bears the name of our.... glorious leader Joseph Stalin, capturing it, as Hitler probably believes would discredit our leader, weakening our morale. But other than political importance, all other reasons for capture seem irrelevant. This was a heavy industrial city and its destruction would hurt the Soviet Union's war effort economically. Since it’s destroyed, I don't see the reason why Hitler and Stalin should sacrifice tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of men, along with thousands of tanks and planes in order to control this pile of rubble. I come to a police station, or secret police, it’s hard to tell which is which. Though it doesn't matter now, the front of it has been blown out that you can't tell what it was before; the roof is missing with only charred wooden beams in its place. I look around and I see dozens of dead bodies, half of them German. From the looks of it I say they engaged in a gunfight, both sides were 40-60 feet apart. I feel a sense of shock and pity when I saw that two of the deceased invaders couldn’t have been older than 18 years, and that several of my fallen comrades were probably at least 15 years old. I’m barely 20 years old, so is that why I’m here risking my life in this blood stained, rubble reduced city? Why Hitler throws away countless lives away to do away with this obstacle for his twisted empire, to kill young men and children? Is that it?! TO DESTORY THE NEXT GENERATION OF HUMANS?! No! No I’m overreacting to this! The German people would refuse to support Hitler if that was the case. But why am I here? What does this ghost town mean to me? I sighed and continued my search the ruins for… my comrades I guess, if there’s any left. I guess that the only thing this place means to me is that if this was my village, I wouldn’t hesitate to defend it. It’s the only place that I know.

 

Works Cited

 

The Battle of Stalingrad." http://www.2worldwar2.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2014. http://www.2worldwar2.com/stalingrad.htm

"The Battle of Stalingrad." N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2014. <http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/Stalingrad.html>.