The Icy Steel Wind Swept Across Their Cheeks

October 14, 1942. At dawn, in the cold wind on Mamayev Hill, I picked up my notebook and wrote down how much I longed for home. Thick smoke and shattered ruins surrounded me, yet in my mind I could still see the wheat fields by the Volga, golden waves rolling as my mother waved from the cottage doorway and my father's familiar laughter nestled in his beard. How I longed to go back, to hear the old village mill creak and tell the neighbor's little dog, "It's all right. Peace will come tomorrow."

But here, the guns were still roaring. When night fell, Dmitri and I stood guard behind a broken wall, telling ourselves we could not retreat, because just one step behind us lay our homeland. Our parents were there, our future was there, and so was Masha, whom I longed to see again. If I fell, who would tell them, "We resisted to the very last moment"?

I scribbled a few lines of poetry in my notebook, as if to encourage myself, or perhaps to pray:

"May the wind sweep across the barren fields,

Scattering the seeds of spring across the earth.

If I do not return tonight,

May my soul become a torch, lighting the way home."

I am Nikolai, once just a boy who loved running through the fields. But to protect that land, I am willing to take up a gun and hold this artillery-ravaged hill with my comrades. As long as my faith remains, I can endure the darkness and wait for dawn, when I will set out for home once more.