My first combat operation is a relatively easy one, but a good test for my newly repaired leg and my fitness. Accompanied by our Russian trainer and following a woman who obviously knows these bush paths very well, we run and jog for the better part of six hours until we’re halted at the edge of an open field. We don’t see any Germans, but wait, concealed in underbrush until well after dark before darting across the field and throwing ourselves against the base of a railway embankment.
Fearful that the sound of our running has alerted the patrols that routinely check this part of the tracks leading from Minsk to the Eastern Front, we still our heavy breathing and listen. Nothing! At the all-clear signal, we clamber up the embankment, and keeping as close to the ground as possible to avoid silhouetting ourselves against the faint glow of a fire burning in distant Minsk, we lay more than twenty sticks of dynamite and fuse along the track, light the fuse, and then run for the welcoming forest with all the speed and strength we can muster.
I don’t quite make it and am knocked flat from the force of the blast that sends at least 100 metres of railway track and ties skyward. Thankfully unhurt, I bounce to my feet, join the rest of our “merry band,” and as dawn breaks we are back in our forest retreat where there is much joking about maybe overdoing it just a bit with the dynamite! “We could have blown up the Great Wall of China,” suggests one of my comrades. “Hell, we could have blown up Berlin,” I say, to much laughter. I am elated. At last, some payback!
For the rest of that year and well into the next, we carry out more than two dozen similar raids, blowing up railway tracks, a bridge and several truck convoys. On one occasion we stage a raid on a German roadblock as a distraction while another group of partisans rescues several Russian POWs about to be put to death. Only once do we get into a firefight with a German patrol. We escape with only one slightly wounded comrade, but it’s a close call. Most other partisan raids aren’t as fortunate. God must still be on my side!
Once in the fall and again in the winter when they think they can follow our tracks in the snow, the Germans make an attempt to locate our encampment and wipe us out. Unable to use tanks or any heavy armament in the deep woods, the Boche foot soldiers are less than enthusiastic in their pursuit. They don’t know the forest, but we do. Our tactic is to send a few snipers out to pick a few of them off and then melt back into the woods. Classic guerilla warfare.
On several occasions the Germans are able to locate partisan zimlankas in our forest and others, but by the time they arrive, the partisans are usually long gone, and more often than not the enemy pays a heavy price on their way out of the forests. Fortunately, we are now confronting the dregs of the German Army. Soldiers who can shoot straight are being pressed into the bloodbath of the Eastern Front.
I am told that in the early days of the partisan operations they did come under attack from the Luftwaffe, whose planes were roaming freely in the skies, but when the quick victory they had expected is denied in Russia, it becomes obvious the German High Command has more pressing problems than Belarusian partisans.
On one memorable occasion, the Germans haul several 105 mm howitzers to the eastern end of the Kurapaty forest and begin lobbing shells at what they think is our location. They miss us by several kilometres, shattering a broad swatch of trees that after another attack, this time from our axes, makes good firewood.
The guns are obviously in much greater demand elsewhere and despite our attempts to sabotage them, after two days of killing only trees, they are successfully loaded aboard a train and shipped east to kill Russians.
By the spring of 1943, the Germans have pretty well given up trying to root us out of our forest lairs and settle instead on increasing patrols in usually vain attempts to protect vital rail lines, bridges, roads and buildings. As I have already told you, what we did in Belarus is by far the most successful of all the resistance movements in Europe.
I have no doubt that even if the Red Army had not arrived in June of 1944 to liberate us, we partisans would have done it on our own. I often wish that is what had happened. We would certainly have been better off.
As the winter snows fade away, it becomes apparent that I am being kept away from the riskier ventures. It troubles me deeply since I have every reason to believe I have been as effective at sabotage as any others in our group. I take part in a couple of minor raids on truck convoys, but even then, my role is kept to a minimum, far from flying bullets.
When I ask what is going on, I am met with nothing but shrugs. None of my comrades knows what’s up either, only that they have orders that my life is not to be placed at risk.
It is mid-summer when I find out why.
There’s a stir in our camp. Word quickly flies around that none other than Urie Labonak,* one of the most famous partisan leaders, has arrived from Moscow.
*FACT: Russian state archives lists a U. Labonak as a key partisan commander.
My life is about to take a dramatic turn!
Soviet caricature. Inscriptions—Ideal Aryan must be: tall (above Göbbels), slim (above Göring), blond (above Hitler). The author of this caricature is famous political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, who died on the 1st of November, 2008, at age 108.
Chosen
“YOU WILL HELP US KILL the Generalkommissar!” Realizing I don’t understand, Labonak impatiently adds, “Kube, Wilhelm Kube, you’re going to help us kill him!”
I am stunned! Labonak gets up from behind a small table covered with maps. He’s a short but powerfully built middle-aged man; thick thighs bulging through the ill-fitting Red Army uniform he’s wearing. Still unable to fully understand what’s happening here, my mind is thinking, “Pear! The man is built like a pear!”
He circles the table and stands in front of me. “Stand up,” he orders. “Look me in the eyes.”
I don’t hesitate.
“Yes,” he gleefully shouts to several nearby aides, “they are a beautiful blue; perfect. Take off your hat.” This time he almost does a little dance. “Yes, look at that, almost blond!” He walks slowly around me, peering intently at my head as though to check that my hair is the same light colour on all sides. “Yes, yes, yes, wonderful, wonderful. Say something to me in German.”
“What?” I ask.
“Come, come—say something in German, let me hear your German; they tell me it is very good.”
I rattle off a couple of words.
“No, no. Give me some sentences, tell me what a wonderful fellow I am or something like that,” and he chuckles.
So, standing there in the stifling heat of a sod hut, bathed in sweat and confusion, I break into German and tell one of the most powerful men in all of the Soviet Union that I really do think he is a wonderful fellow and so is everyone else in the entire partisan movement. This mighty little pear of a man breaks into a toothy smile, claps his hands in approval and dismissal and my fate is forever sealed! It seems my German is good enough to qualify me for what I fear will be a suicide mission.
The Hot Water Bottle!
IT HAS NEVER BEEN CLEAR to me whether Yelena Mazanik was Wilhelm Kube’s lover or his maid. Some history books say the former, others the latter. One thing I have no doubt about is that if she is having sex with the Generalkommissar, the mass murderer of Minsk children, it’s not for love of anything but her country.
She certainly doesn’t hesitate when the partisans make contact with her and ask if she will help kill him. “With pleasure,” is what she is reported to have replied.
And