Time moved slowly. Too slowly. Dmitri felt as if every second dragged like an hour. If he owned a watch, he imagined he would be staring at the dial, watching the second hand crawl toward the moment of attack. The quiet ticking would probably feel louder than the distant rumble of artillery. But he had no watch. All he had was a rifle.
He gripped the cold wooden stock tightly, his fingers stiff from the night air. The metal of the barrel felt damp with condensation. In the darkness ahead, shadows moved. At first Dmitri thought they were tricks of the eye, but soon he realized what they were: German soldiers. Several figures were running back and forth across the bridgehead, carrying ammunition crates and repositioning weapons. Even in the darkness, their movements looked organized. Efficient. Professional.
The Germans knew how to prepare for battle. Most of them were veterans—men who had already marched through Poland and France. Soldiers who had seen cities fall and armies collapse. The Soviet soldiers, on the other hand, were mostly rookies. Men like Dmitri. Just a few days earlier he had barely known how to load his rifle under pressure. Now he was preparing to storm a fortified position. That thought made him uneasy.
Up until now, most of the fighting inside the fortress had been defensive. Defensive combat was simpler for inexperienced soldiers. Hide inside a trench. Peek over the edge. Fire at whatever enemy you saw. But attacking was something else entirely. It meant leaving cover. Running into gunfire. Charging toward enemy positions that were designed to kill you.
Dmitri swallowed nervously. Still, perhaps none of them were rookies anymore. Not after two days of fighting. Not after surviving artillery, machine guns, and air strikes. Two days inside Brest Fortress felt like two years. Anyone who lived through that was no longer the same person.
The night air felt thick and tense. No one spoke. Even the river seemed quieter than usual. Then it happened. Three soft sounds broke the silence. Thump… thump… thump… Red signal flares shot into the sky. They rose slowly, glowing like crimson stars before bursting into brilliant light. For a brief moment, the entire battlefield turned blood-red.
Then chaos exploded. Gunfire erupted from every direction. Rifles cracked. Machine guns roared. The quiet darkness around Brest Bridge suddenly transformed into a storm of bullets and shouting. Neither side could clearly see the other at first. Most of the shots were blind. Soldiers fired toward muzzle flashes or vague shadows. A few seconds later, more flares burst overhead. This time they were white illumination flares. The night vanished. The entire battlefield lit up like a ghostly stage.
Trenches. Sandbags. Barbed wire. German soldiers scrambling between positions. Soviet troops firing from the darkness. Everything was suddenly visible. And everything looked like something dragged out of hell.
Dmitri raised his rifle. A German soldier appeared in his sights. Bang. The rifle kicked hard against his shoulder. The German collapsed immediately. Dmitri did not even realize he had fired until he saw the man fall. Two days earlier, such a moment would have left him frozen in shock. But now it felt strangely natural.
Dmitri had discovered something about war. The most terrifying moment was not the battle itself. It was the waiting before it began. The long minutes of silence. The imagination filling your head with images of death. Once the shooting started, those thoughts disappeared. There was no room for fear. Only action. You either killed the enemy—or you died.
Bang. Another shot. Another German soldier dropped. This one had been kneeling beside a radio set. The man had been shouting into the receiver just before Dmitri fired. The radio crackled loudly as the soldier collapsed backward onto it. Dmitri blinked. He realized something. His shooting had changed.
During the earlier battles inside the fortress, he had fired almost randomly. Find an enemy. Aim. Pull the trigger. If the target fell, Dmitri mentally added another number to his count. If he missed, he simply fired again. But now something was different. He found himself observing the battlefield more carefully. Almost calmly. It felt as if part of his mind had stepped outside the battle. Like a spectator watching the fight from above.
From that perspective, certain targets stood out. Important targets. Dangerous targets. The radio operator had been one of them. A signalman could call for reinforcements. Or artillery. Or air support. Which meant he had to die first. Dmitri fired again. Another German soldier collapsed beside the radio. For a brief moment the machine continued to crackle with half-finished words. Then silence.
Dmitri suddenly realized something else. The Germans were trying to report the situation. Which meant they were confused. They had not expected an attack here. That confirmed Dmitri's guess. The trap was working. The Germans believed the main Soviet breakout would happen in the north. But instead—six hundred soldiers from Kobrin Fortress had been secretly moved toward Brest Bridge. And from the other side, the Central Fortress had committed nearly its entire remaining force. More than a thousand Soviet soldiers were converging here.
The Germans defending the bridge had only a single company. About one hundred men. They had been completely misled. The deserters had convinced them the attack would happen elsewhere. And now they were paying the price.
"Fix bayonets!" Captain Venyakov's voice cut through the noise of battle. Dmitri instinctively reached for the bayonet hanging from his belt. The steel blade slid into place beneath the rifle barrel with a metallic click. The command made sense. The Soviets had the advantage in numbers. The Germans were surprised. Night fighting was chaotic and unpredictable. The fastest way to finish the battle was a direct assault. Close combat. Overwhelming force. End it quickly.
But as Dmitri held the rifle with its newly attached bayonet, hesitation crept into his mind. Charging meant leaving the trench. It meant exposing himself to enemy fire. He imagined the dark barrels of German rifles waiting ahead. For a moment, he pictured the situation reversed. He had been the one aiming at Germans earlier. Now the Germans would be aiming at him.
A few thoughts flashed rapidly through his mind. Should he zigzag while running like the German soldiers sometimes did? Would the comrades beside him provide covering fire? What would happen once they reached the trenches? How exactly did hand-to-hand combat work? Would he stab? Slash? Or simply shoot?
But Dmitri soon realized something. He was thinking too much. War did not allow time for careful planning.
"Comrades!" Captain Venyakov shouted. "The final moment! Soldiers—charge!"
"HURRAH!" The shout exploded from hundreds of throats. Like a sudden storm, Soviet soldiers leaped out of the trenches. Dmitri hesitated for just a second. He wanted to see how the others moved so he could copy them. But what he saw surprised him. There was no formation. No precise maneuver. No disciplined advance. The charge was chaos.
Men ran forward shouting wildly. Some fired while running. Others simply sprinted with their bayonets lowered. It looked less like a military maneuver—and more like a human avalanche. Dmitri jumped out of the trench. Immediately his mind went blank. All the tactics he had imagined disappeared. All the careful thoughts vanished. There was only one thing left. Run forward.
He gripped the rifle tightly and followed the charging mass. Around him, soldiers screamed like madmen. "HURRAH! HURRAH! HURRAH!" The sound echoed across the battlefield like thunder. Dmitri could feel sweat running down his back despite the cold night air. Several times he almost slowed down. Several times he considered pretending to fall and stay on the ground.
His instincts screamed at him to stop. To hide. To survive. But his legs kept moving. Almost mechanically. Like a machine. He continued running forward, shouting along with the others—even though he barely recognized his own voice.
Then the German machine guns opened fire. A long burst of bullets swept across the charging soldiers. Several men beside Dmitri collapsed instantly. Blood splashed across his face. Warm. Sticky. For a moment Dmitri nearly froze. But the momentum of the charge carried him forward.
More gunfire. More shouting. Then mortar shells screamed overhead. WHOOOOOO—BOOM. Explosions ripped through the ground. Shrapnel whirled through the air like swarms of angry metal insects. Dmitri heard fragments tearing through bodies. Through earth. Through equipment. A body flew through the air and crashed onto the ground ahead of him.
The corpse blocked his path. This would have been the perfect moment to fall down. To lie flat. To hide from the storm of bullets. But instead—Dmitri jumped over the body. And kept running. Faster. Even faster.
Later, when he thought about it, Dmitri realized what had happened. It was the power of the group. When hundreds of men ran forward together, individual fear disappeared. The crowd carried you with it. Even if part of you wanted to stop—the rest of the group forced you forward. This was the strange psychology of war. The herd instinct. And at that moment, Dmitri was no longer just one frightened soldier. He was part of a charging army.