The Siege
“The packed barn smells of women. Flesh, sweat, blood, dirty clothes, swollen feet. The heavy smell of work sweat, and the sharper, acrid stink of fear.The light of a hurricane lamp sends shadows stretching and sprawling. They’ll have a couple of hours sleep, maybe three, just enough to stop them falling over as they dig.Everyone’s hungry. A pail of cabbage soup with dried mushrooms is hot and tasty when it’s fresh in your belly, but the fullness doesn’t last long. And too much cabbage soup make...s you shit. Shadow after shadow dodges out of the barn to crouch among trees, guts twisting. Only hope nothing splashes on these trousers, there’s no chance of washing them tonight.The bread supply didn’t arrive this evening. Four trucks shelled yesterday, someone said. The green and golden land of summer is changing. It smells of raw earth from hastily dug fortifications. It smells of sap where the pale-yellow inner flesh of birches quivers as the tree is chopped down. Trucks and tanks have gouged their way up to the Luga line, leaving the fields churned up behind them.MoreLess
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