"Why?" Sasha asked, his voice trembling. "We need that to fight."
Nikolai closed his eyes. He thought of the wheat fields of his village, the warmth of a clay stove, and the smell of baking rye. He knew that by morning, many of the men across the street would be frozen solid in their shallow foxholes. He knew many of his own comrades would not wake up. Stalingrado
The snow in Stalingrad did not fall; it drifted like ash, settling over the skeletons of factory chimneys and the jagged ribs of apartment blocks. He knew that by morning, many of the
Across the narrow, cratered street, the ruins of a department store loomed like a rotting tooth. Shadowy figures in field-gray moved through the second-floor windows. This was the "Rat’s War." There were no sweeping charges here, only room-to-room struggles where men fought with sharpened spades and jagged pieces of glass. Across the narrow, cratered street, the ruins of
Many descriptions of the psychological toll on soldiers and civilians are captured in Vasily Grossman’s epic novels .