What saved them was the first two tanks burning and blocking a direct attack by the Germans. The ravine protected them on the left, the little wood on the right. Or, at least, so they thought. Which is why when, with the sound of tree trunks smashing, a tank loomed up, flattening the scrub, they did not even have time to be afraid. The tank was firing at will but the person huddled within its stifling entrails had been in too much of a hurry.

The explosion flung Ivan to the ground. He rolled into the trench, groped around in a hole to find the stick grenade's handle, removed the pin, and, bending his arm back, hurled it. The earth shook – he did not hear the explosion but felt it in his body. He raised his head above the trench and saw the black smoke and the shadowy figures emerging from the turret. All this amid a deafness that was at once ringing and muffled. No submachine gun to hand. He threw another grenade, the last one…

Swathed in the same hushed silence, he left the trench and saw the empty steppe, the smoking tanks, the chaos of plowed-up land, of corpses and trees torn to shreds. Seated in the shadow of the gun was an aged Siberian, Lagun. Seeing Ivan, he got up, signed with his head, said something and – still in an unreal silence – went over to the machine-gunner's little trench. The latter was partly lying on his side, his mouth half open and twisted in such pain that, without hearing it, Ivan could see his cry. On his bloodied hands only the thumbs remained. Lagun began to dress his wounds, bathing his stumps with alcohol and binding them tightly. The machine-gunner opened his mouth even wider and rolled over on his back.

Ivan stumbled around the tank covered in leaves and broken branches and made his way in under the trees. Two ruts left by the tank tracks gleamed darkly vivid in the torn-up grass. He crossed them and headed toward where the shade was deepest.