Borodino’s Soldier
By Lilly, 17, Wisconsin
It’s 1812. Frost has taken my finger after General Bonaparte led us into the dark in an attempt to take over Moscow, a densely packed city ruled by a Czar incapable of facing our troops, and who resorts to burning down his own villages. I sit next to the warm bodies of my comrades days after battle, the Russian soldiers guarding us a few feet away spoiling the rather comforting situation. Four of us are huddled near the fire behind the murmurs of soldiers’ tents. An unnamed soldier to my right was reading a note announcing his mother’s death under his breath, my general to the left of me, and a sick Polish soldier to the left of him. The danger of snow set us to a halt, and the ebony night came up and crept over our camp. The sharp heat of the pile of sticks we called a bonfire melts the ice which had formed on my eyelashes. I wipe the resulting water off with the burlap sack I’m using as a blanket from the cold.
I look to the man to the right of me. A good-natured but hot-headed man—his uniform is stained with brown blood, and his injured arm is covered with old gauze. I recall him telling me before we fought earlier in the week that he was planning to shoot himself if he failed to win the battle in Moscow. He told me his name before, but on account of his position in battle, I chose not to remember it. The man only looks solemnly past his tied hands at the snow in front of him.
I rub my fingers over the splintering wood on the crate I kept as we passed through one of the villages near the edge of Moscow— to find an intact crate as the city burned was gold. The same can’t be said about any rations. Any food or shelter our troops came upon would already be set aflame by Russian commands, a bold, aggravating move taken in order to starve us. And with the unforgiving and desolate winters, we couldn’t harvest anything if we tried. I’ve eaten a total of three times in the past five days: a can of salted fish, three spoiled radishes in a bowl of snow, and a hearty serving of one of our last horses.
“Bonaparte’s got a lot coming if he thinks we’ll survive to the next sunset,” the general to the left of me whispers. He has a good, naive outlook on our situation. On his, anyway. The Russians are known to give the French lenient treatment in captivity. He’ll be out of here soon. The same couldn’t be said about the Polish soldier next to me. He’ll be seen as a traitor and be taken care of accordingly. I’m surprised he hasn’t been taken already. I give my general a content smile, and he pats me on the back. “You are a smart boy from Italy. You want to go home, Giovanni?”
I toss the thought in the air a few times. I could never go home and expect the same things I did back when I was last there. In about the three weeks we set east from France, my older brother, Agostino, was a perfectly trained, well-proportioned man chosen to be on the front lines of battle for “intimidation” and caught a musket shot to his head. The grief came gradually along with the realization of war, and once I managed to find a time to cry, the tears froze and stuck to my cheeks. I had no other known relatives except for him, and I took the time to count the important blessing of being a fairly unattractive chap. I also took the time to claim the rations that fell from the body.
“It would be kind if God gave me the chance. Anything is better than being here,” I say quietly back to the general. His eyes are looking past me.
I can’t say I’m confident that my general knows how Italians are managed in custody. I also can’t say I’m confident in his governing skills either, given the situation.
“To be chosen for an army…” He starts, plucking the chunks of snow melting in his mustache. I turn my attention back to him. “You are a book just beginning to be finished. The Russians are ruthless and outrun us by miles. Napoleon was foolish to consider invading. All of Europe couldn’t be enough to satisfy him. I dreamed of a France free of a ruler, and look at who I’m working under now.”
My fist closes around the cuffs of my uniform. I didn’t know much about the man in command at all. The salary outweighed the detriments. Back then. I smile again at him.
The Polish soldier next to the general begins a sentence before hurling a cough into his fist. “I think the Battalion could use more nurses. The nice sweet ones with cheeks the color of roses and smiles that could cure any illness.” He looks up in the sky longingly.
“And you expect to find a woman within 1000 miles? Have you read the Napoleonic code?” The wounded soldier sitting beside me scowls. “The bastard’s scared of any female.”
The coughing Polish soldier gives a warning glance to the wounded man and the armed Russian guarding us. He wipes the coughing-fit-induced saliva off his lips with a handkerchief and begins talking in a much quieter voice. “Share with us what the letter is about, Clement?”
The man (whose name I learn is Clement), bitterly unfolds the letter he’d been tearing off the edges, then quickly shoves it back in his uniform pocket. “A note asking me to bring a pheasant for next Christmas.” A lie.
I think to myself and wonder why he chose to cover the death of his mother to the other soldiers. To add to an already demoralizing night with another unneeded death would be less than desired, obviously. Does it matter anymore? How many more men’s deaths until we win a war? A war that General Napoleon already stated was, in his words, “a fair draw.”
There’s a simmer of unease before the general sitting beside me breaks his silence. “Well, let’s hope your hunting skills are better than your skills on the field,” he grins at Clement’s injury. Clement is not amused.
Only minutes later, the snow is falling heavier and the sky becomes darker. Our warmth is rationed since the fire in front is dying under the blanket of snow. Even the Russians guarding us are shaking. I keep my hands cupped in front of my face to shield from the sharp air, the scratchy twine from the rope holding my wrists together stinging my already red nose. I close my eyes and think of a better time than this. I think of the warm skies in Italy, where the air wouldn’t hurt to breathe in. I think of when my brother and I played pretend in the streets with other children and our wooden swords, now replaced by heavy muskets made of iron and smelt of war. I think of when I wasn’t a prisoner and despised the countries next to me, and now, more than ever, do I realize that none of us know the point of battle anymore.
I open my eyes to the sound of shuffling in front of me. A few of the soldiers guarding us are talking in hushed voices, looking back at us and then back to their conversation. My comrades and I exchange worried glances. I notice a new face, a young boy out of breath with a lantern and carrying a satchel on a small horse. I watch him hand the guard a letter with a signature on the front, and he makes a face I can barely make out in the darkness and snow. A mix of pride and confusion.
The horse is uneasy as one of the soldiers pats it, meaning what I’m guessing is a signal to leave. I look at my general for any kind of reassurance. He greets me with none, only an uncertain breath in the frigid air. I don’t think it’s any sort of good news when the Russian guard grins at us.
“What are they waiting for?” asks Clement. I could hear his teeth chattering.
“Orders, maybe,” the Polish soldier mutters. “Or perhaps a note saying to eat us. I heard they did that.”
Before anyone could reply, the horse neighs and grunts, almost running us over as it runs through the woods behind us, and extinguishing any sign of fire left in the sticks in front of us. The guard turns to us, furrowing his brow as he looks at each of us. His musket is dangerously too close to his reach around his back. As I take a closer look, the signature on the envelope is from a general close to the Emperor.
“We have… received word,” the Russian says. His voice is stabbing and harsh. “From your emperor.”
My general sits up straighter. “Napoleon?”
The guard unseals the note with his finger. It feels like with every clump of glue unsealed from under his hand, the sicker I feel. The sting of hunger is finally setting in.
In clear French, he reads: “The Emperor has crossed Niemen. He has left Russia.”
Silence falls over the soldiers I sit next to. I look for any kind of untruthfulness in the guard’s face, but I’m left with nothing. The soldier turns back around to join his comrades.
“Do you think he’ll return to us?” The Polish soldier asks. I ask the same thing in my mind. No. He’s gone. Whipping through the snow on a sled led by well-fed dogs, while men like us freeze in the woods with our hands bound together. This is the man that we soldiers loved more than God, but I’m marching for glory?
My hands are frostbitten and shaking. I wonder if it would be better to be shot in the snow like my brother or starve to death in the woods with my feet firmly planted in a sheet of ice and snow like I am now. I watch my general take a bronze medallion and flip it between his pale fingers. The emperor’s face was still regal, still proud, but it felt more like a mockery. A lie pressed in metal.
I remember the faces of the dead, the men who died believing they were a part of something eternal. They followed that red, blue, and white flag like it was a holy relic, like dying under it meant something. I wonder if even the Russian soldier opposing us right in front of my comrades would feel the same way if the Czar happened to resign. Did he trade years of his life for a dream like us? Or will he kill us with no second thought in his mind?
There is a raw, unexpected pain blooming in my chest. A hurt deep and dull, unclean and twisting in my heart. Silence dawns over us, uncomfortable and heavy. I carry the weight of an ambition I never had on my back, and the consequences loom over us all. The men who play chess with our lives have turned the board upside down and destroyed the pieces.
That night, I dream of silence. Not the silence of death, but the kind that comes after noise. The kind that means guns have finally stopped.
THE END
I love history and wanted to express my hatred for war.
