“Once will do,” Mia said, and closed the door, enjoying her first moment of privacy in weeks. She quickly tore the strip of yellowish bandage in two, wondering whose blood still remained embedded in the gauze she was about to clean herself with. She hoped the person had survived the wound. Surely it would be bad luck to walk around wearing the blood of a dead man.

She wiped herself clean with one half and tied the other inside her underwear, the last vestige of her American civilian clothing. She washed the now-soiled half in the bucket, squeezed out the water, and left the toilet cubicle with the damp bundle in her hand.

“This is going to be awkward,” she said. “Where do I hang this to dry?”

Kalya laughed. “Don’t go all fussy on us. This is a battlefield and there’s blood everywhere. No one’s going to know where yours came from.”

Mia joined the women in the corner they had claimed and, like them, began to clean her rifle. She had no idea how to dismantle the weapon but watched the others and saw how logical the process was.

They had no sooner finished than a young corporal announced from the doorway, “4th platoon, you’re up.” They all grabbed their mess tins and hurried out to line up next to the field kitchen.

Breakfast was bread, a thick cereal of various grains boiled in water, and tea. It was at least filling and significantly superior to the hard bread they’d had to consume the previous night. With her mess tin and cup filled, Mia returned to her friends.

“Hmm. Could use a little sugar,” Mia remarked.

Kalya laughed. “And butter, and caviar, and meat, come to think of it. And some of my grandmother’s marmalade.”

“All right. I know I’m spoiled.”

“We’re spoiled, too, actually,” Sasha said sympathetically. “I always had marmalade at home, from apples and pears. I didn’t realize how bad most people ate until I became a soldier.”

“Is that what you miss? The food?” Mia asked. She liked Sasha and could so easily imagine her in civilian life: coquettish, flirtatious, effervescent.

“I miss ordinariness. Cooking, setting my hair in curlers, singing, putting on dresses and heels, falling in love.”

“Did you have an admirer? A gentleman, I mean?”

Kalya snorted. “I bet she had a dozen of them, didn’t you, Sasha?”

“Don’t be silly, Kalya. It wasn’t like that. Okay. Maybe a couple of boys at school. Okay, maybe a lot of boys at school. But what about you, Marina? What was life like for you back in America?”

Mia blinked first at being called Marina. She felt certain she could trust these women but had had probably already divulged too much information about her past.

“I worked in an office, doing accounting. Yes, I liked the dresses, but the more daring women already wore pants, fashionable ones, not like these.” She tugged at the knees of her baggy trousers. “But we had lots of marmalade.”

“Do you still have family? Are they worried about you?” Fatima asked, and Mia remembered that Fatima had lost everyone in Leningrad.

“Um, well, I have only a brother, but I think my boss worries more about me than he does.” She thought of Harry Hopkins, who surely imagined she was dead.

“Alexia said you worked in Washington, with the government. Did you ever see President Roosevelt?”

Mia wasn’t sure what to reply. She’d already told them enough to endanger them.

Alexia came to her rescue. “I think it’s best not to ask Marina too many questions. You know what they say. Ears are everywhere.”

“Yes, and besides, I have to report back to my unit or the commissar will have my hide. She seems to hold some sort of grudge against me. That’s all I need.”

Mia stood up, collected her rifle and mess kit, and, with a small wave, threaded her way among the groups of soldiers to the door.

* * *

The next morning at five, the order came to fall in. Sitnya was eight kilometers due south, and they were ordered to take it before nightfall. The commissar reminded the infantrymen of the “not one step back” policy that prohibited surrender or retreat, and the troops nodded silently to an order they hated.

Mia let her gaze sweep around the square of Ostrov but saw no sign of her friends.

After the morning ration of porridge, the troops began the march. The land was uncontested for most of the way, and the abandoned artillery pieces they passed told them that the Germans were in full retreat. Nonetheless, a cornered beast is most dangerous, and Mia, trudging in their midst, knew not to be cocky.

And indeed, outside of Sitnya, the Germans had dug in and set up a formidable defense. Indifferent to the cost, the colonel ordered them to attack, and once again Mia charged amidst a group of men, firing her rifle blindly ahead of her. The roaring of the Russian troops around her was soon drowned out by the sounds of exploding grenades. The Germans were throwing them just ahead of their own advancing troops, creating a line of pits between the armies. But soon the space between them closed.

Just ahead of her, the bright light of a grenade explosion revealed two silhouettes thrown into the pit, one from the German side, and the other—oh God—was Sasha.

Mia screamed “Medic,” ran toward the still-smoking pit, and slid down into it.

Sasha lay on her back, blood pouring from the ragged hole that once had been her lower right arm. On the other side of the pit was the German, who had also been struck by the blast and had slid upright into the hole. He too bled profusely, from the stump below his knee. Spontaneously, both Mia and the German aimed their rifles at each other, but the German was too weak to hold his upright, and it dropped to the side. Mia turned her attention to Sasha, called out “Medic” a second time, and seized the mutilated arm, squeezing it above the hemorrhaging wound. “Medic, Medic!” she kept screaming, glancing over her shoulder.

The German was still alive, and now he simply moaned, in a German that even she could understand, “Hilf mir, O Gott. Hilf mir.” She saw now that the front of his tunic was sodden with blood, so he must have also had a stomach wound. He stared at her and lifted one hand weakly, pointing a limp finger toward his pistol, still in its holster at his belt. “Hilf mir,” he repeated. “Töte mich, Kamarad. Bitte.”

But at that moment she cared only about Sasha, who was panting through clenched teeth, obviously in agony. She stared at Mia with huge eyes, as if she knew something terrible.

“Medic!” Mia screamed again, watching the blood still trickle from the ruined arm that she could not grip tightly enough. It poured in a constant stream to the bottom of the pit and joined the pool of blood from the hemorrhaging German. Even in the terror and excitement of the moment, she saw the irony of the two bloods mixing.

“Hang on, my friend. Just a little longer.” Just then the medic arrived and crawled in next to her to tie off Sasha’s arm. “Help me lift her onto the stretcher,” the medic ordered, and Mia obeyed, clambering next to her with the quivering form of Sasha between them. When they slid her onto the stretcher, she went limp.

Behind Mia the German had begun to sob. “Hilf mir, Mama, bitte.”

As she stood up to sprint with the stretcher bearers to the rear, she still heard him behind her in the pit. “Mama… Mama…”

* * *

Deeply shaken, holding Sasha’s good hand, Mia ran with the stretcher some fifty yards until the captain-commissar blocked her and aimed her pistol squarely at Mia’s chest. “Get back on the line, right now.”

Mia came to her senses, and with a last look at Sasha, she spun around and jogged back to the front line that still advanced under fire into the town.

She charged forward with renewed frenzy, sensing her comrades around her. They stormed past the remains of buildings, and she crouched sometimes, taking aim and picking off soldiers in green. The battle raged, it seemed, for hours, and she had just leaped up for another sprint when an enemy shell hit behind her, blasting mountains of dirt and debris into the air. The dust stung her eyes, and she coughed as she glanced over her shoulder toward the comrades coming up behind her.

All she could see in the smoke was the heap of rubble that had just fallen behind her and something pale that jutted out from the bottom of it. A hand that scratched the ground.

She scrambled toward it, tore away dirt and powdered brick, clawed doglike at the suffocating pile. An arm became visible, the sleeve torn but bloodless. Then a shoulder, and finally a head, a dirt-smeared face that gasped for air and coughed out filthy mucus.

“Comrade Commissar? Are you all right?” Mia continued brushing away debris.

Captain Semenova sat up panting and wiped dirt from her eyes. Then she seemed to remember something and twisted away from Mia to claw through the rubble. “My pouch! We must find my pouch. My party membership card…” A leather strap appeared close by her hand, and she snatched it up, pulling the pouch out from under the dirt. “I’m fine now,” she finally answered, staggering to her feet. “Continue the attack, soldier.”

The rescue had taken only a few minutes, and in that time, the front line had moved into the town. She caught up to them, advancing cautiously, although the defending Germans seemed to have melted away. Skirmishes took place in front of her as clusters of men were uncovered, but it was clear, the main group had retreated. They had taken the town.

By early evening, the troops amassed in an open square, each platoon reporting to its leader, waiting for the sappers to search for mines and traps. It had started to rain, and Mia crouched, somber, with her own group, her arms around herself. Her only thought was Sasha.