This is death, I think. This is the end. I think of Nadia as the sliver of gray sky disappears above my head. I crawl another meter to the left, where the trench ends, to keep the sky visible, as if the sight of the torn edge of a rain cloud over the mangled earth could save me. Sweat pours into my eyes, but I can’t wipe it off because every part of me is shaking from the racket and the stench, from the metal heat and the terror beating inside my chest, from not wanting to die yet. As the tank swivels right and left over the trench, pulverizing the dead soldier into a mash, I press into the sticky muck on the bottom and lie there like a wet rat, suffocating, mortified, and already half-dead.

And then it becomes light, and I can see the sky again. The tank has moved forward. I dig out, spitting out fetid dirt, bumping into the sole of a crushed boot, and peek out. The tank is clattering away; the other two are far ahead, all but disappearing behind the grove. I remember what Seryoga told me: When all you see is its back, it can’t hurt you. This is when the tank, with all its crew, all those who were safe and untouchable only minutes earlier, is yours. Strike their motor in the back, Seryoga instructed, and when they start to climb out, shoot them, one by one.

I have one more grenade. I wait until the tank clatters about ten meters forward, then pull the pin and throw. The explosion shakes the air and flings me back onto the bottom of the trench. Seryoga was right. Two figures clamber out of the tank hatch. There is desperation in their jerky movements, in their arms and legs that twitch as if pulled by strings. I wait until they jump on the ground, and then I shoot each of them with a handgun, one after the other, one bullet for each. That’s all they’re worth, two bullets. “This is for you, Seryoga,” I want to say, but I don’t, because the words refuse to leave my throat. They are caught inside, together with the taste of trench dirt, together with the smell of warm blood; they almost gag me. I no longer have words.

When I stumble back to our position, caked with foul soil and blood that isn’t mine, Seryoga is in the trench, and seeing him alive makes my legs turn to jelly. He is sitting up, scraping dirt from under his fingernails with a knife. Dirt and someone else’s blood, probably, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I didn’t leave him to die on the battlefield with the three Nazi tanks and no cover.