Category: Writing and Poetry

This was my only hope in passing my English GCSE.
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Tyrannical Pillar

A pillar, they say can never be destroyed whilst it is important to people and they care what happens to it, some more than others but care still the same. And when the pillar is a a city can a city be destroyed man has tried but it’s inhabitants always pick up the pieces and start again only for another people to try an demolish it again. This city isn’t on the edge of destruction. It is near annihilation. Two peoples fighting over the city. Two opposing factions, two different ideals fighting amongst the bombed-out remains of peoples homes and work places, of schools and restaurants just memories of the peaceful life people who lived here used to have. Young men and women scurrying in and out of wreckage while their leaders sat comfortable in their chateaus which they commandeered to set up their “forward headquarters’’ even though they were so far away that it took hours to get from there to the front lines. Fire, smoke the smell of cordite wafting through the air as civilians either flee or die in the fighting. Elderly people, the infirm no one is pardoned from the slaughter. More fighting and more dying as the two fanatical leaders and their cronies delude more women and more men into the “glorious’’ fighting but if they survive their first week of combat they learn that their leaders “motivational’’ words are as good as the bloodstained earth they fighting over. The city’s name:
Stalingrad

“Get onto the boat!’’ a bellowing voice called.
The new conscripts after a miserable train journey in cattle trucks in which some were sick in where now faced with a different trauma. Near the bank of the river Volga there were mounds of casualties, all crammed in between crates and on the ground. Anywhere which was big enough to put someone in. Their bandages dirty and drenched with blood, their wounds at the mercy of infection and disease. Some crying out for there mothers some fitting from the combination of the cold and lack of medical care.
The doctors, nurses and field medics did their best but with the lack of supplies and sheer amount of cases they barely managed to cope. Something was also in the air, an evil smell that seeped up your nostrils and without warning hits you with full force and sends your senses reeling. Its was the smell of gangrene.

“Move it!’’ another officer bawled.
The new soldiers piled onto an old battered steamer that floated on the black water of the Volga. In the distance they saw it, the city was burning as if it was the place of residence of the devil himself.
“Doesn’t look good does it ?’’
“No’’
Two men in their mid twenties spoke. The question came from private Alexi Georgiev, the reply Alexsandr Sopolov. Two friends from the Urals they climbed into the steamer that took them across the pitch black waters of the river.

On the other bank of the Volga injured soldiers awaiting transport to the crowded field hospital on the other bank. Above them the oil refinery , its’ tanks ablaze filling the day sky with thick tar black smoke the smell of oil filled the place like an invisible blanket.
“Jesus’’ gasped Alexi.
“Christ’’ gaped Alexsandr.
The two soldiers were broken out of their stupefied state by a call from a loudspeaker….
“First man takes a rifle , The second ammunition when the first man dies the second takes the rifle and shoots !’’
The message was repeated again and again. Alexi and Alexsandr joined the crowd of men all wanting a rifle to pay the German invaders back. But half were turned away with nothing to face the enemy but a clip of ammunition. The two friends both received rifles and all the now armed men gathered into a crowd awaiting deployment. Every one of the new soldiers was frightened but never showed it in fear of one of the commissars shooting them for cowardice in front of the enemy there was also the enemy artillery projecting their deadly cargo of high explosive shells that sounded they were gradually creeping closer.

They were moved on though the sounds of battle and the voices of political commissars yelling speeches about the Motherland, their families and the sacrifices that their brothers made.

The soldiers were all packed into a bombed out building that used to be some flats. In front of the building there was a huge grey stone wall but peering over the top of it was the hill.

The hill was steep and at it’s summit was giant hexagonal bunker which with it’s several machine guns dominated the hill. The hill also had numerous machine gun nests that seemed to follow the very contours of it. The signs of battle were clearly visible. Shell craters, upturned earth, bodies and bits of bodies of both nationalities. Worryingly there more Russian bodies than German. There where flags and banners all over the ground some still in their carriers hands, once they would have shown the love for country now they were dirty and forgotten. One flag in particular caught Alexi’s eye and he called Alexsandr to look at it.

It wasn’t a normal Soviet flag with the hammer and sickle it had a white circle with a red star in the middle of it. Overlapping the star there was a red flag on the end of a golden staff and around the white circle there was a circle of gold leaves.

Alexi asked a grizzled sergeant where it came from.
“Its from a air force squadron’’ he said “when their base was bombed they came here to continue the fight, they were good lads, all gone now…’’
The sergeant was interrupted by a officer addressing the troops.
“Welcome to Mamaev Kurgan comrades, the facists are directing artillery from the top of this hill. We can’t take back Stalingrad unless we control that bunker, good luck comrades!’’
A commisar spoke up.
“Forward comrades!”
A cry rose up from the men.
“Defend your mothers!”
Another roar.
“Get the German invaders!”

That was the time to go, machine gun fire and artillery barrage waited for them as they charged through the holes in the wall and up the hill.

The fighting was bitter and hard to recapture Mamaev Kurgan and the Soviets lost a huge number of men a whole division (10,000 men) in one day. After the war a colossal monument of “Mother Russia” was erected on the hill that overlooks the modren day Volgograd. You may even find bones and rusty metal splinters on Mamaev Kurgan today,symbolic of both the human suffering and the successful yet costly ressistance against the German invasion.

Alexi Gergiev died in the battle to take the hill and Alexsandr Sopolov fighting in other pivotal battles gradually grew tired of the slaughter and deserted, he was recaptured and sent to a penal battalion. He died in mid 1945 whilst clearing a minefield. A week before the German surrender.

And when he gets to heaven,

To Saint Peter he will tell,

One more soldier reporting sir,

I’ve served my time in hell.
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