In times of war, heroism blends with the tragic, the comic and the absurd. They are all
\nintertwined, much in the same way as it happens in times of peace. But unlike
\npeace, war is a time when no rules are observed and reason no longer works. In
\nWorld War II, on the eastern front in the Soviet Union, the Romanian soldiers
\nwere faced with countless such absurd circumstances, life-and-death situations
\nin which everything hangs by a thread.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Boanta,
\na sub-lieutenant at that time, fought on the anti-Soviet front in 1942. In a
\n1955 interview to the Oral History Centre of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting
\nCorporation, he recalled the battle of Sadovoy, near the Russian town of Oryol.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Boanta: At some point, I was in the trench, next to the guy who was handing the
\nammunition belts to the machine gunner. One of them was called Velicu, I don’t
\nremember the name of the other soldier. The fire coming from the Russians was
\ntremendous, I think I can say it was the most terrible shelling we had ever
\nseen. Now, this soldier who was feeding the ammunition belts into the machine
\nwas very eager to see the Russians approaching. So he was squatting, his back
\nleaning against the side of the trench, and looking forward. I warned him, ‘Be
\ncareful, boy! Can’t you see the shelling we’re up against?’ At some point, we
\nonly heard one sound: ‘Ouch’. And when I turned to look at him, a bullet had
\ncrossed his skull, from forehead to the back of his head, and blood was gushing
\nfrom his forehead on my boots, as I was lying face down. When he saw this, the
\nother soldier was shocked and started crying. So to quiet him down, I told him,
\n‘Shut up! Don’t you dare cry over this! He had it coming’.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Boanta
\nalso heard of nightmarish scenes, in which inhumanity reached atrocious levels.
\nThe killing of prisoners was just one of the grotesque facets of such
\nbrutality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir Boanta: When we took
\nback Sadovoy, we found a well, where the bodies of a large number of officers
\nfrom our corps had been thrown. They had been marched there by an officer who
\napparently was speaking Romanian, although of course he was not Romanian. He
\nmay have been from the south of Bassarabia, a Gagauz perhaps, and he told our
\npeople, ‘Now, you Romanians, it’s time for you to die!’ He would show them his
\npistol and ask each of them, ‘Where would you rather be shot?’ And he would
\nshoot them as he pleased, in the head, or the heart. He then walked to a
\nmoustachioed captain from the artillery troops called Panaitescu who asked him
\nto shoot him in the heart. The Gagauzian told him: ‘No, I’m going to shoot you
\nin your moustache.’ He shot, the captain fell, and then they were all thrown
\ninto the dry well. When our troops arrived, they fished everyone out of the
\nwell, everyone the officer in the Soviet army had shot in such a cowardly way.
\nSurprisingly, the man who was shot in his moustache had survived, but was in
\nshock.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In war, survival was
\noften a matter of luck or the result of a sudden change in someone’s state,
\nVladimir Boanta recalls:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
A former University colleague of mine, called Mircea Stefanescu, who had been taken
\nprisoner, was put in a line together with the other officers. A drunken officer
\nwho didn’t speak Romanian showed them his gun and asked them: ‘What’s this?
\nAnd if they said it’s a gun, they would be shot. The question was only a way of
\nmaking fun of people, he would shoot them anyway. My colleague told me how he
\nsaw one of the eyes of a man who had been shot next to him pop out of his head.
\nWhen the Russian asked my colleague what is this?’, referring to his gun, my
\ncolleague started calling him names, thinking he would be shot anyway. The
\nRussian, who was drunk, asked his translator what my colleague said. The
\ntranslator told him and the Russian himself started calling my colleague names
\nin Russian and walked away, staggering on his feet, no longer shooting
\nanybody.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
For 45 years, the
\nSoviet propaganda only highlighted the barbaric behaviour of the Romanian
\ntroops passing through Soviet villages. In reality, however, the interaction
\nwith the local population was as good as could be expected in wartime. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vladimir
\nBoanta: The locals were
\nall impoverished people, so our troops could not possibly covet their goods,
\ngiven that they were coming from a place where things were much better. How
\ncould they possibly steal from poor people? On the contrary, the locals were
\nhoping the soldiers would share some of their limited supplies with them. So
\nour soldiers sometimes shared some of their food with the locals. Many of our
\ntroops were in fact people from the countryside, as were the locals. A natural
\nrelationship thus developed between the soldiers and the locals, given they
\nshared the same social background and the same way of life.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One conclusion we
\ncan draw from all these accounts is that day-to-day life during the war is
\nsometimes more complicated than historical sources may reveal. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In times of war, heroism blends with the tragic, the comic and the absurd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":129918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42709,42708],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-129917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-soviet-front","tag-world-war-ii"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n