Their blood was not the last

My mother was born to a 49-year-old woman, my father to a 44-year-old. They were children of that war; their older brothers were its soldiers. It once stunned me that I and some cousins were the first peaceful generation in our family after World War II—though since 2014, we’re a war generation again.

Two of my father’s brothers and two of my mother’s. From silences, slips, and family quarrels, I learned as a child that Uncles Oleksiy and Mykhailo fought the “real” war and were heroes. But Uncles Mykola and Leontiy? Better not ask where they fought. The response might be a heavy, awkward silence, followed by a scolding or an ear-twist from my mother: “Hush!” Even as a child, I sensed that though my uncles were drafted into the same army against the same enemy, each had his own war, his own torment, and things you couldn’t tell another because they wouldn’t understand. Now, with none of them left, I’m still trying to understand.

Where are you, Mykhailo?

It’s not just a tradition; it’s an 80-year ritual in our family: every May 9, no matter the weather, we go to Zhytomyr’s military cemetery and place flowers on every grave marked with the name Mykhailo. My grandmother taught us: “We’ll lay a flower on someone’s son Mykhailo, and maybe somewhere, someone will lay one on our Mykhailo’s.”

She gave birth to him in 1916 and sent him to the front in 1941. Until her death, she hoped to find his grave. She was lucky: she died without learning it doesn’t exist.

I know Uncle Mykhailo only from photos: lush black curly hair, huge deer-like brown eyes. My mother was five when she last saw him. She remembered his curls, a wooden horse he gave her, and the gingerbread he shared.

As his youngest sister, she was the last to remember him alive. She’s been gone two years now, and Uncle Mykhailo lives only in faded family photos.

As a child, I heard his story from my grandmother—a sad fairy tale in which the prince never found his princess and died unmarried. Now, I tell my daughter and nephew: Mykhailo had no children, so if we forget him, it’s as if he never existed. But he did.

He went to the front in June 1941, escaped encirclement that fall, and returned to Zhytomyr. By then, a German post office occupied my grandmother’s house. I was born in that house. I know where German parcels were stacked in what later became the living room. The ladder Mykhailo used to reach his attic hiding spot served me, too. As a child, I imagined with dread what would’ve happened if the Germans had found him.

A Soviet POW camp sat on Zhytomyr’s outskirts, close enough that the family heard gunfire and prisoners’ screams on quiet nights. Fearing Mykhailo would be sent there, my grandmother led him through clay pits and forests in April 1942 to cross the front line eastward. I once memorized their route; now I only recall her eyes welling with tears, turning turquoise as she told the story.

Mykhailo crossed the front, fought as an infantryman, and in early 1944, after Zhytomyr’s liberation, sent his first letter in two years. My grandmother invited a priest for a thanksgiving service.

But soon, a hospital commissar from near Ternopil wrote that Mykhailo was “struck by a tanka.” My grandmother recited that letter to me, and I always marveled that “tank” was feminine in the phrase.

After receiving that letter, she dreamed of Mykhailo lying on a bench, a girl in a long red dress covering him with a sheet. She knew its meaning. No death notice came; his commanders reported him missing. For years, she awaited his return. When the state granted her a 12-ruble pension for him, she knew he was gone.

The family searched for his grave in vain. In the mid-90s, the “Book of Memory” listed him buried in a mass grave in Pyliava, Ternopil Oblast. Relatives visited. Locals digging in gardens said wartime burials were moved long ago for a memorial—where, no one knew. Now it’s a plowed field. Does Mykhailo sprout as grass there? He died of wounds on April 13, as spring filled the fields.

Guilty without guilt

Uncle Leontiy had finely carved features and thin, bitterly pursed lips. I now think that bitterness came from the war. Drafted at 20, his war was rarely mentioned in our Soviet-era family—being a POW meant being guilty.

Captured by Germans soon after mobilization, he likely shared details only with an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943SMERSH. Returning from German captivity after Victory, he bore a traitor’s stigma, deserving scorn, not pity.

Soviet authorities sent him from German camps to a Soviet one near Tula, where he toiled in peat bogs for years. My grandmother visited him there, near Leo Tolstoy’s estate-museum. She told her children about guides misrepresenting Tolstoy, but stayed silent on the camp visit.

In the ‘70s, as a a youth organization for elementary school children in grades 1 through 3 in the Soviet UnionLittle Octobrist, I took after the a youth organization of the Soviet Union for children and adolescents ages 9–14 that existed between 1922 and 1991Young Pioneers who went to the yards of war veterans to greet them: I had fun marching with them to the sound of the bugle and drum. My grandmother’s children lived nearby. I’d wait for Pioneers at Aunt Olena’s to honor her veteran husband, then follow them to neighbor Ivan Ivanovych’s. Every year, they passed Uncle Leontiy’s gate without stopping. A former German POW wasn’t on their list. I’d tell them a veteran lived there; they’d say he wasn’t listed.

I noticed that when the Young Pioneer bugles sounded, Leontiy left his yard for the house.

I never dared ask about his war or how he felt when, under Gorbachev for the 40th Victory anniversary, he received the Order of the Patriotic War II Degree, finally recognized as a veteran.

A rear officer in uniform

Uncle Leontiy was guilty in the state’s eyes for being captured. Uncle Mykola, my father’s brother, was guilty in his own for not fighting.

Before the war, he graduated from a technical college and briefly worked on the railway in Konotop. Mobilized men from Konotop were to be sent to Kyiv. Family lore recalls my grandparents watching for Mykola’s train in Bakhmach, hoping to glimpse his face or bless the train. Trains ran at night without stopping, and Grandma Liza blessed each one.

Mykola said his education ruined his life. The only technical college graduate in his train, commanders sent him thousands of kilometers from the front to the Far East to repair military equipment until September 2, 1945Japan’s defeat. Lean, stern, and condescending to me, he was the only officer among my veteran uncles—a major. As a child, I didn’t like him, embarrassed that he didn’t fight. I was ashamed of his sole medal, “For Victory Over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945,” which another relative mocked as a “tin badge for sly foxes.” I smirked whenever my favorite uncle, Oleksiy, called Mykola “deputy for the rear.” Even learning Mykola slept in repair shops, was near dystrophy from exhaustion, lost most of his teeth, and begged to be sent to the front didn’t erase that “rear” jab. It long kept me from seeing him as an intelligent, reliable man with a deep sense of duty, not truly harsh.

A 19-year-old “black jacket”

Uncle Oleksiy was my childhood friend. He cared about the person I was becoming. We listened to music, bought records, and he read my books and school essays. Both born in May, a day apart, we made much of the coincidence. A 1945 photo of him at home showed a weary, middle-aged face. As an adult, I realized he wasn’t even 21. A kid.

He reached the front at 19, in fall 1943, after his Bakhmach district was liberated. Like thousands from newly freed areas, he became a “black jacket”—boys sent into battle without weapons or uniforms to atone for living under Germans. Read writer Anatoliy Dimarov’s diaries about charging with a brick instead of a grenade.

Oleksiy never spoke of his first attack, or any others, and avoided school talks. When I pressed, saying I wanted to know about the war, he looked at me with sad eyes, saying I didn’t need to know, and he himself wanted to forget.

He died with that.

Fifteen years ago, on Russia’s “People’s Feat” website, I found his war records—award documents. It was shocking to realize that a 20-year-old did this.

Medal “For Courage” in July 1944, Kovel battles, for “destroying enemy soldiers, an officer, and a light machine gun.” Order of the Red Star, October 1944, near the Polish village of Michałów-Grabina: “Under enemy artillery fire, Red Army soldier O. set up a mortar, destroying many enemy soldiers.” Two Orders of Glory, January and March 1945, for actions near Poland’s Pilica River: “In the infantry’s front line, he was among the first to cross, directing his battery’s fire, suppressing enemy anti-aircraft guns.” And for “advancing in infantry lines under heavy enemy fire near the Oder River at Heckendorf, directing mortar fire, enabling infantry to advance.”

His final award, Order of the Patriotic War, came March 23, 1945, for a battle near Schwabach, Germany: “Despite heavy enemy fire, comrade O. and scouts were among the first to storm the village, killing two German soldiers, capturing a machine gun, and locating an enemy mortar battery, enabling its destruction.”

I read this years after Oleksiy’s death, stunned he never wore these awards, only their ribbons. They didn’t bring joy; they pained him.

As a child, I grieved he didn’t take Berlin. As a teen, I was upset he wouldn’t read Marshal Zhukov’s war book I gifted him. What a fool I was.

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My uncles assured me war would never return to our land—people wouldn’t let that repeat. Worn and scarred by their war, they believed it. Now, they must be turning in their graves: their blood wasn’t the last.

Uncle Mykola’s son, born in Russia, lived there his whole life. At 73, he’s not fighting me, his Ukrainian cousin. But whether he has a grandson aiming at the son of Mykola’s sister Mariyka from Bakhmach, I’m not so sure. After Mykola’s death, his Russian descendants cut contact.

This is an author's column. The opinion of the editorial board may not coincide with the opinion of the author.