The sergeant was sitting on an empty shell case, drawing on the last cigarette of his life. Half an hour later, amid the din and dust storm of the battle, he would emit a gasp and slowly collapse onto his side, clapping his hand to his chest, as if to pluck from it a tiny, jagged sliver of shrapnel.

How had they come to find themselves with their gun on this high ground between that sparse woodland and a ravine full of brambles? Why had they been left on their own? Who had given the order for them to occupy this position? Had anyone actually given such an order?

The battle had lasted so long that they had become a part of it. They had ceased to feel separate from the heavy shuddering of the 76-millimeter antitank gun, the whistling of the bullets, the explosions. Pitching and tossing like ships, the tanks surged across the devastated steppe. In their wake the dark shadows of soldiers were moving about in clouds of dust. The machine gun rattled out from a little trench on the left. After swallowing its shell the gun spat it out again, as if with a "phew" of relief. Six tanks were already smoldering. The rest of them drew back for a time, then returned, as if magnetically attracted to the hill stuffed with metal. And once again, in a fever of activity, completely deafened, their muscles tensed, the artillerymen became indistinguishable from the gun's frenzied spasms. They had long since ceased to know how many of them were left, as they carried up the shells, even stepping over dead men. And they would only become aware that one of their comrades had died when the rhythm of their grueling task was broken. At intervals Ivan looked behind him and each time saw the red-haired Seryozha sitting comfortably beside some empty ammunition crates. Each time he wanted to yell at him: "Hey! Sergei! What the fuck are you doing there?" But just then he would notice that all the seated man had left of his stomach was a bloody mess. And then in the din of the fighting and the racket of gunfire he would forget, would look back again, would again be on the brink of calling out to him and would again see that red stain…