Requiem in the Birch Forest

At 4:30 in the morning, just as Political Commissar Valentin had predicted, the Chechens launched their final and most ferocious assault. This time, they brought with them three heavily armored pickup trucks, makeshift armored vehicles packed with explosives. Steel plating and wire mesh turned the fragile frames into deadly juggernauts, and everyone defending the base knew what lay inside—car bombs meant to erase them all.

"Concentrate fire on the trucks! Don't stop shooting!" Valentin barked. If even one truck breached the final concrete wall, they might as well start reciting their farewells to Marx.

The soldiers, numb to fear and fatigue, raised their rifles and opened fire. Bullets streaked the dark like tracer fire from the heavens. RPGs hissed, yet missed the dodging, zigzagging trucks. At the critical moment, the sniper stationed in the tower fired a single shot that pierced the head of the first driver. The truck veered and exploded into a fiery blossom, a three-meter-high fireball that lit up the battlefield.

The victory was short-lived. The sniper, repositioning, was struck down by an enemy marksman. Now, the defenders were blind to distant threats.

"Keep firing!" Valentin roared, pointing at the remaining vehicles. A soldier knelt, shouldered the RPG, and fired. The second truck caught the rocket at the grille, flipped, and landed on its side, erupting into flames.

One remained.

Heavily armored and relentless, it bulldozed through the incoming fire, barreling toward the last concrete barricade.

"Evacuate! Now!" Valentin grabbed Ivanov and nearby soldiers, dragging them down from the bunker. Ivanov fell, and his cherished harmonica flew from his coat.

"My harmonica!"

"Forget it! Run!" Valentin pulled him just as a thunderous explosion consumed the wall behind them. The shockwave sent snow and debris skyward. The two were buried beneath the weight of earth and fire.

Ivanov awoke to muffled sound and blood. He pushed Valentin off, climbed up, and beheld a vision of hell. Soldiers, ablaze, writhed in the snow. Others crawled, half-limbed, bleeding out as they reached for rifles they would never fire again.

He found Valentin—a steel shard through his gut, blood soaking his white camouflage.

"Don't pull it out, you idiot," Valentin coughed. "You want me dead sooner?"

"But—"

"Just get me to cover."

Ivanov lifted him, dodging falling mortar shells, heading to the last defensible building. Chechen mortars and grenade launchers began raining fire. But the Soviet defenders didn't flinch. They fought until bullets ran dry, then threw grenades. When those ran out, they affixed bayonets.

Twenty soldiers remained.

Their soot-smeared faces turned to Valentin as he lay wounded. "You are the soldiers I raised. None of you ran."

He looked at them one by one. "This is our last stand. Will you die with honor for your country, or live in disgrace as prisoners?"

"We stand with you, Commissar," one soldier declared, fixing a bayonet. "Even if I'm the last alive, I won't leave this post."

Valentin smiled. "Then forward, comrades. For the Soviet Union!"

Gunfire crackled nearer. The soldiers crouched, trembling with anticipation. Ivanov's hands shook on the rifle.

"Three, two, one—charge!"

They surged from cover just as the enemy approached, faces lit with firelight and rage. But before the melee began, a new sound ripped the sky—a roar like thunder.

The militants froze, staring upward.

A column of Soviet tanks burst through the eastern treeline.

Reinforcements had come.

Just as Ivanov was about to turn around, two Hind helicopters thundered low over their heads, blowing back the beige coats of the Soviet defenders with their rotor wash. The 12.7mm onboard machine guns began to roar, cutting swaths through the Chechen lines. In seconds, the vanguard of the militant charge was reduced to bloodied wreckage.

"Sorry, comrades, we're late. Take five—leave the rest to us." A voice boomed from the helicopter's loudspeaker, tinged with both apology and authority.

Another pilot barked over the comms, "Taking out their mortar nests. Hold tight."

The Hind veered sharply, unleashing a salvo of rockets into the trees where mortars had once flashed. The explosion lit up the dark sky like a firework display—except this show came with flames, screams, and finality.

To the Chechen militants, it was as though God himself had descended with fire and steel.

The snow was no longer white. It shimmered orange from the blasts and burned black in the craters. The last sparks of resistance flickered out in the whirlwind of gunfire and shock.

Then, silence.

And just beyond the horizon, a pale line of silver crept into the sky. Dawn.

Valentin, bloodied and leaning against a crumbling wall, cracked a grin. "You air force boys… Said you'd be here at dawn, and damned if you weren't. So punctual... couldn't be early, huh?" He chuckled, wincing with pain, then whispered to himself, "This time... I can really go home."

Perhaps it was the blood loss. Perhaps it was the war finally ending. In the golden light, Valentin saw them—his boys. The fallen. Still in uniform, smiling, unscathed. Watching him. He reached out to them with trembling fingers.

Instead of cold, he felt warmth.

The first ray of morning sunlight had touched his hand.

Valentin smiled one last time, closed his eyes, and let the silence take him.

The armored divisions rolled into the ruined base minutes later. They passed burnt-out trenches and the hollow shells of bunkers. The smell of scorched metal and blood hung in the air. One soldier dismounted, surveying the destruction. "The fighting here must've been hell."

"It was," another replied, his voice hoarse. "But no one here ran. Not a single step back."

In the aftermath, the survivors were lifted away for treatment. Valentin, unconscious but alive, still wore a faint smile as medics worked to stabilize him. He had kept his promise—to fight, to lead, and to never retreat.

The rest began clearing the battlefield, covering bodies with white cloth, naming the unnamed, and counting the cost of a night that had nearly broken them.

But not all found comfort in survival.

Ivanov wandered the snow-churned wreckage, ignoring shouts to tend his own wounds. He searched, bloodied hands digging through frozen mud, overturned crates, and burnt trees.

At last—he found it.

The harmonica.

Cracked at the edge but whole, buried beneath a birch stump like some forgotten relic of peace.

Ivanov sat alone on a broken tree trunk, harmonica in hand, eyes hollow. Around him, the world was ash, smoke, and silence. But in his hands—music.

He wiped it clean and pressed it to his lips.

From the ruins rose the final notes of "Birch Forest." A requiem for the fallen. A whisper to the dead.

"The sky is still cloudy, but pigeons are still flying.Who will bear witness to the love and life that have no tombstones?"

Snowflakes fell softly now, gentle and slow. The birch trees swayed slightly in the breeze, as if listening, as if mourning.

"The snow is still falling, the village still peaceful,And the young are disappearing in the birch forest."

The song ended.

The forest fell silent again.

The war, for now, was over.