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Emma's Story -- Part 1
This is the story I mentioned in the discussion "Meaningful Feedback". The events are true. The conversations, transitions and dialogue are mostly imagined. I think it fits our definition of CNF. I hope you enjoy it.
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Emma’s Story – Part 1
In the years before World War II Emma lived a happy childhood in Moscow, the capital of Russia. Her family had a small apartment of their own and she had a lot of friends her age. Emma had big red hair like some of the popular movie stars she read about. Sometimes people teased her about her hair but some of the other girls were secretly jealous. Boys had begun to notice the pretty redhead who lived on the fifth floor but she was too shy to talk to them.
Emma didn’t pay much attention to the news she heard on her family’s radio, the big wooden one with the glowing dial. She preferred the music they played in the evenings. She did know that Germany was somewhere in Europe, to the west, and Japan was in Asia, far to the east. She knew that Russia had lost terrible wars to those countries earlier in the 20th century. That was history, though, from the time of the tsars. Things were better now and would keep on getting even better. Everyone said so.
There were so many things for a girl to do in Moscow, even if she didn’t have much money. No one else had any money, either. Kids could ride the great subway, the Metro, for free. It could take you anywhere, like a magic carpet.
Emma loved museums. Her favorite was Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery. A rich man had donated a huge collection of Russian art so that all Russian citizens could enjoy it. She didn’t really understand all of the pictures. Life had sure been different in the old days.
The Hermitage Museum in Leningrad was the new name for the former Winter Palace of the tsars. It was more famous than the Tretyakov and it had strange foreign art. Still, she was proud to be a Russian, and especially a Moscow Russian. She thought if something was Russian then it had to be the best. That thought always made her smile. Besides, Leningrad was Old Russia. Moscow was everything that was new. Moscow was the best.
Moscow could be very hot and muggy in the summer. Emma stayed outside as much as she could, even in the evenings. No one had air conditioning but that was OK. Everyone was just hot together. Emma and her friends often visited the public swimming pools around the city. Once she even visited the huge public pool where the great cathedral used to be. Nothing was more fun than swimming with friends on a hot day. Who needed a cathedral? Pools were better than churches any day.
Everyone loved the White Nights of summer. Of course, Leningrad’s were more famous and lasted just a little bit longer but Moscow had them too, summer nights when the sun set so late that you could read outside almost all night long. People stayed outside late into the evening hours, chatting and snacking and flirting and planning their lives. She was sure that Moscow’s White Nights were every bit as good as Leningrad’s. Maybe even better.
There was always enough to eat at home. Familiar traditional Russian food like soups and black bread and hot sweet tea. There were some popular new ethnic restaurants in Moscow, with exotic food from the far republics of the USSR like Ukraine, Georgia and Siberia. Of course, regular people couldn’t go to them but you heard the tales and the food smelled marvelous when you walked by.
Emma had heard her parents’ stories and she knew that it hadn’t always been that way. It was strange to think that your parents were ever as young as you are. Were they really hungry every day back then or were they just exaggerating? Who knows? She barely remembered her babushka who died in 1933. Once, when no one thought she was listening, she heard that her babushka had died of hunger.
Going to high school was magical. It was proof that she was growing up. School lasted all day and there was homework every night. You owed it to the state to do your best. There were always reminders of the sacrifices that the early Soviet heroes had made so that you could live a better life. Emma knew that those reminders and stories were true and she dreamed of making a difference in other people’s lives.
When she wasn’t studying, her days were filled up with interesting things to do. There were school outings to factories and the countryside, mandatory volunteer labor opportunities, Young Pioneer meetings and youth events and family visits to their traditional village house.
Emma applied and was accepted into her school’s nurses training course. Not real nurses, of course, more like nurses’ helpers. She discovered that she loved taking care of sick people and she was even good at it. People responded to her and felt better and sometimes they even got better. Emma was proud of being good at her adult responsibilities.
The rumors began late that 1941 Sunday, June 22. They said that something was happening with the Germans at the border, but who were “they” and how did they know and what was going on? The radios weren’t exactly silent but there wasn’t any news either, only Russian classical music all day and all night. That was strange.
More people than usual were standing around outside talking late into the White Night but all they could do was guess. People always guessed in the Soviet Union but not many people guessed in public. If you guessed wrong in public you might get arrested. In the Soviet Union, even if you guessed right in public you might get arrested. Better to keep your thoughts to yourself.
Oh, my God! Comrade Stalin says that the Germans have attacked us and that we’re at war. War? How could that be? I thought the Germans were our friends. Aren’t we at peace? What? How? Why? No one could explain it.
Still, Emma was in her final year of high school. She was going to continue her studies and become a real nurse. The war wouldn’t last, would it? How could it? It was summer, the skies were blue and clear and Emma was strong and young and healthy. A war would be very inconvenient and spoil so many of her wonderful plans. The Germans would soon be sorry, wouldn’t they?
Emma graduated early that fall. She was still only 16. Her nursing program had been accelerated but she still finished with honors. Despite the German bombs and the shelling, nothing could keep Emma from her graduation party. It wasn’t what anyone had expected. It was quiet and it was sad.
A lot of the boys had already left for military training or even gone directly to the fighting at the front. A few of her friends had already been killed, some other classmates went missing during the bombings right there in Moscow and others had evacuated with their families.
There was a blackout on graduation night and every other night, food was now strictly rationed and all anyone could talk about was the war, the war and the war. There wasn’t even any dancing, and Russians love to dance. The musicians never showed up. Everyone went home early and few of the graduates ever saw one another again.
The very next day her parents said goodbye to Emma and watched her climb into a boxcar on a train headed west, to the front. To the war. The trip didn’t take very long. When she got there she just wandered around at first, amazed at the confusion, the noise and the sense of desperation and doom.
Finally a young officer noticed the small redheaded girl and demanded “What are you doing here?” “I want to help”, she said. “I think I can help the wounded.”
“Are you a nurse?” he asked. “No”, she admitted, “Not exactly.”
“Have you ever been in an operating room?” “Well, no.”
“We need emergency room surgical nurses. That’s what you are girl, starting right now. Come with me.”
Emma was shocked at what she saw when the officer took her into her first Red Army combat operating theater. Blood, bodies, wounds that she had never imagined even in her nightmares, screaming patients without anesthesia, contradictory orders shouted back and forth.
She wanted to run. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to cry. Instead, someone asked her “Are you scrubbed up?” “No”, she replied. He pointed to a bloody bowl and some rough soap and told her simply “Clean up. We need you.”
That’s how Emma joined the Red Army as a 16-year-old surgical nurse in training, when you could still see the artillery flashes at the Western Front from downtown Moscow. As the Red Army moved westward and suffered millions of casualties along the way, doctors and operating rooms and surgical nurses like Emma moved along with them. Emma walked and was trucked from the front where she joined, just west of Moscow, all the way to Berlin. Once, sixty years later, she was asked “Emma, how close to the Germans were you?” She replied “Oh my. Sometimes we were in the same trench.”
Immediately after the war Emma earned a two-week leave to visit home. She was a nurse lieutenant by now, an exhausted 20-year-old veteran who had forfeited her youth, a combat officer with the medals to prove it. She took a military train out of Berlin but it was jammed and unreliable. When it broke down she found herself in a train station in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, looking for a place to rest. There were no facilities for women. She was told she could lie down in an empty troop transit barracks but there was nothing else for her, not even food.
A wooden bunk was enough. She pulled her overcoat completely over her head and fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke she could hear voices, a lot of men’s voices, a whole barracks full of voices. Some of the men sounded drunk. She was terrified. A lonely barracks full of soldiers was a dangerous place for a woman, even an officer. She didn’t know what to do.
On impulse, Emma threw back her overcoat and stood up suddenly. With her wild red hair she could not be mistaken for just another soldier. The men froze and the barracks became deathly quiet. She didn’t look around as she brushed off her uniform and slowly began walking the length of the barracks toward the door, through a gauntlet of stunned soldiers.
A moment later one veteran began to clap, slowly. Others joined him. By the time she reached the door the men were cheering and shouting and kissing her hands. They knew she was a heroine and an angel. No, she was their angel, seemingly appeared from nowhere, a sign that their terrible war must finally be over.
Earlier this year – 2008 – Emma was living quietly with her family in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia, when the Russian Army, her old Red Army, invaded. The Russians bombed near Tbilisi, not too far from where she was. Emma, now in her 80s, refused to evacuate, saying “This is my country. I am a warrior. I’ll stay.”
__________
Emma’s Story – Part 1
In the years before World War II Emma lived a happy childhood in Moscow, the capital of Russia. Her family had a small apartment of their own and she had a lot of friends her age. Emma had big red hair like some of the popular movie stars she read about. Sometimes people teased her about her hair but some of the other girls were secretly jealous. Boys had begun to notice the pretty redhead who lived on the fifth floor but she was too shy to talk to them.
Emma didn’t pay much attention to the news she heard on her family’s radio, the big wooden one with the glowing dial. She preferred the music they played in the evenings. She did know that Germany was somewhere in Europe, to the west, and Japan was in Asia, far to the east. She knew that Russia had lost terrible wars to those countries earlier in the 20th century. That was history, though, from the time of the tsars. Things were better now and would keep on getting even better. Everyone said so.
There were so many things for a girl to do in Moscow, even if she didn’t have much money. No one else had any money, either. Kids could ride the great subway, the Metro, for free. It could take you anywhere, like a magic carpet.
Emma loved museums. Her favorite was Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery. A rich man had donated a huge collection of Russian art so that all Russian citizens could enjoy it. She didn’t really understand all of the pictures. Life had sure been different in the old days.
The Hermitage Museum in Leningrad was the new name for the former Winter Palace of the tsars. It was more famous than the Tretyakov and it had strange foreign art. Still, she was proud to be a Russian, and especially a Moscow Russian. She thought if something was Russian then it had to be the best. That thought always made her smile. Besides, Leningrad was Old Russia. Moscow was everything that was new. Moscow was the best.
Moscow could be very hot and muggy in the summer. Emma stayed outside as much as she could, even in the evenings. No one had air conditioning but that was OK. Everyone was just hot together. Emma and her friends often visited the public swimming pools around the city. Once she even visited the huge public pool where the great cathedral used to be. Nothing was more fun than swimming with friends on a hot day. Who needed a cathedral? Pools were better than churches any day.
Everyone loved the White Nights of summer. Of course, Leningrad’s were more famous and lasted just a little bit longer but Moscow had them too, summer nights when the sun set so late that you could read outside almost all night long. People stayed outside late into the evening hours, chatting and snacking and flirting and planning their lives. She was sure that Moscow’s White Nights were every bit as good as Leningrad’s. Maybe even better.
There was always enough to eat at home. Familiar traditional Russian food like soups and black bread and hot sweet tea. There were some popular new ethnic restaurants in Moscow, with exotic food from the far republics of the USSR like Ukraine, Georgia and Siberia. Of course, regular people couldn’t go to them but you heard the tales and the food smelled marvelous when you walked by.
Emma had heard her parents’ stories and she knew that it hadn’t always been that way. It was strange to think that your parents were ever as young as you are. Were they really hungry every day back then or were they just exaggerating? Who knows? She barely remembered her babushka who died in 1933. Once, when no one thought she was listening, she heard that her babushka had died of hunger.
Going to high school was magical. It was proof that she was growing up. School lasted all day and there was homework every night. You owed it to the state to do your best. There were always reminders of the sacrifices that the early Soviet heroes had made so that you could live a better life. Emma knew that those reminders and stories were true and she dreamed of making a difference in other people’s lives.
When she wasn’t studying, her days were filled up with interesting things to do. There were school outings to factories and the countryside, mandatory volunteer labor opportunities, Young Pioneer meetings and youth events and family visits to their traditional village house.
Emma applied and was accepted into her school’s nurses training course. Not real nurses, of course, more like nurses’ helpers. She discovered that she loved taking care of sick people and she was even good at it. People responded to her and felt better and sometimes they even got better. Emma was proud of being good at her adult responsibilities.
The rumors began late that 1941 Sunday, June 22. They said that something was happening with the Germans at the border, but who were “they” and how did they know and what was going on? The radios weren’t exactly silent but there wasn’t any news either, only Russian classical music all day and all night. That was strange.
More people than usual were standing around outside talking late into the White Night but all they could do was guess. People always guessed in the Soviet Union but not many people guessed in public. If you guessed wrong in public you might get arrested. In the Soviet Union, even if you guessed right in public you might get arrested. Better to keep your thoughts to yourself.
Oh, my God! Comrade Stalin says that the Germans have attacked us and that we’re at war. War? How could that be? I thought the Germans were our friends. Aren’t we at peace? What? How? Why? No one could explain it.
Still, Emma was in her final year of high school. She was going to continue her studies and become a real nurse. The war wouldn’t last, would it? How could it? It was summer, the skies were blue and clear and Emma was strong and young and healthy. A war would be very inconvenient and spoil so many of her wonderful plans. The Germans would soon be sorry, wouldn’t they?
Emma graduated early that fall. She was still only 16. Her nursing program had been accelerated but she still finished with honors. Despite the German bombs and the shelling, nothing could keep Emma from her graduation party. It wasn’t what anyone had expected. It was quiet and it was sad.
A lot of the boys had already left for military training or even gone directly to the fighting at the front. A few of her friends had already been killed, some other classmates went missing during the bombings right there in Moscow and others had evacuated with their families.
There was a blackout on graduation night and every other night, food was now strictly rationed and all anyone could talk about was the war, the war and the war. There wasn’t even any dancing, and Russians love to dance. The musicians never showed up. Everyone went home early and few of the graduates ever saw one another again.
The very next day her parents said goodbye to Emma and watched her climb into a boxcar on a train headed west, to the front. To the war. The trip didn’t take very long. When she got there she just wandered around at first, amazed at the confusion, the noise and the sense of desperation and doom.
Finally a young officer noticed the small redheaded girl and demanded “What are you doing here?” “I want to help”, she said. “I think I can help the wounded.”
“Are you a nurse?” he asked. “No”, she admitted, “Not exactly.”
“Have you ever been in an operating room?” “Well, no.”
“We need emergency room surgical nurses. That’s what you are girl, starting right now. Come with me.”
Emma was shocked at what she saw when the officer took her into her first Red Army combat operating theater. Blood, bodies, wounds that she had never imagined even in her nightmares, screaming patients without anesthesia, contradictory orders shouted back and forth.
She wanted to run. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to cry. Instead, someone asked her “Are you scrubbed up?” “No”, she replied. He pointed to a bloody bowl and some rough soap and told her simply “Clean up. We need you.”
That’s how Emma joined the Red Army as a 16-year-old surgical nurse in training, when you could still see the artillery flashes at the Western Front from downtown Moscow. As the Red Army moved westward and suffered millions of casualties along the way, doctors and operating rooms and surgical nurses like Emma moved along with them. Emma walked and was trucked from the front where she joined, just west of Moscow, all the way to Berlin. Once, sixty years later, she was asked “Emma, how close to the Germans were you?” She replied “Oh my. Sometimes we were in the same trench.”
Immediately after the war Emma earned a two-week leave to visit home. She was a nurse lieutenant by now, an exhausted 20-year-old veteran who had forfeited her youth, a combat officer with the medals to prove it. She took a military train out of Berlin but it was jammed and unreliable. When it broke down she found herself in a train station in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, looking for a place to rest. There were no facilities for women. She was told she could lie down in an empty troop transit barracks but there was nothing else for her, not even food.
A wooden bunk was enough. She pulled her overcoat completely over her head and fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke she could hear voices, a lot of men’s voices, a whole barracks full of voices. Some of the men sounded drunk. She was terrified. A lonely barracks full of soldiers was a dangerous place for a woman, even an officer. She didn’t know what to do.
On impulse, Emma threw back her overcoat and stood up suddenly. With her wild red hair she could not be mistaken for just another soldier. The men froze and the barracks became deathly quiet. She didn’t look around as she brushed off her uniform and slowly began walking the length of the barracks toward the door, through a gauntlet of stunned soldiers.
A moment later one veteran began to clap, slowly. Others joined him. By the time she reached the door the men were cheering and shouting and kissing her hands. They knew she was a heroine and an angel. No, she was their angel, seemingly appeared from nowhere, a sign that their terrible war must finally be over.
Earlier this year – 2008 – Emma was living quietly with her family in Tbilisi, the capital of the Republic of Georgia, when the Russian Army, her old Red Army, invaded. The Russians bombed near Tbilisi, not too far from where she was. Emma, now in her 80s, refused to evacuate, saying “This is my country. I am a warrior. I’ll stay.”
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Chuck Stromme on
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Heck, I didn't know you read it that time. I've got another story to post next week.
Thank you.
Chuck
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Permalink Reply by LC-Hawk on
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LOL....I have read EVERYTHING you have sent me. I am just not very good at replying. And sometimes, your Georgia pieces, I forward to my son and have him explain to me ;-).
This particular story captured my imagination because the beginning mirrored the flavor of my experiences growing up. I loved the memory of sitting on the stoop on a hot summer night playing and chatting with friends that the story evoked. Although I wasn't growing up around a war, I spent several nights, as a child, crying myself to sleep with fear because of the "Cold War" and the demons that were out there trying to hurt me and my family.
Then the story triggered my imagination in another direction. I could imagine the hectic pace of her time at the front. I could imagine the chaos of the field hospital (thanks M*A*S*H!). I was ready to fall asleep with Emma and wash away the exhaustion that must have consumed her. I felt the fear when she woke up and was worried she might be hurt. Then I was emotional with the soldiers response. The story left me wanting more.
I respect writers. I am amazed at how they can wrap you up in their world by simply putting words down on paper. I have just never spent the time doing it myself. Heck those 3-4 paragraphs I added earlier today took me two days to write! And when I was done, it seemed that my careful, and eloquent choice of words fell well short of what I thought I was putting down on the page. I don't know how writers do it!
My writing experience has always been short hand. Write a synopsis of what I have seen, in a manner a sixth grader can understand, and can be delivered in a news/sports broadcast (limited amount of time). So, for a guy that has made a living "communicating" I find the written word format difficult and cumbersome.
I can, however, appreciate it when someone can help me leave the "real world" and spend time in their world. I'll read everything that is posted. I may or may not respond. But I'll appreciate every piece and maybe, just maybe, I'll get around to adding some things myself.
Chuck Stromme said:Heck, I didn't know you read it that time. I've got another story to post next week.
Thank you.
Chuck
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Permalink Reply by David Koguashvili on
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This is an amazing story, about the feelings and the memories of one lady and her tribute to the war. Plus, that is something indicating that there were some common goals to achieve and noble mission at the same time defeating the enemy, that was common to everyone, both for Georgians, Russians and Americans; no differences and no disregard of the roles of any of those participants in overall success. Nowadays there is a complete mess; all of sudden for uncertain reason your ultimate neighbor turns out to be your bloody enemy; today we claim independence, but in fact we are solely depended on the good will of the western society...Yes there is a valid cause to be inspired defeating own territorial integrity, but from whom, from Russians? that is most depressing factors from the rest, fighting with those, who we had side by side been straggling for common goals (nobody would even challenge the truth that was on our side during that second world war, and in that we were absolutely on the same side of the river, with no differences who's war was that, and no one could even imagine even in night mere, that one day Georgians would be forced to fight with Russians, who we would share the common values, common sorrow and common Victory with in not a very recent past) and nowadays everything is changed, that what does make this war (2008) lacking the sense, the truth and the enthusiasm, because you feel that something is missing there, that it is an artificial and that is no aim or noble mission behind of it, rather then spoiling the century built historical and cultural values...
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