The Day the Ice Road Opened to Lake Ladoga (1941)

An illustrated history story from Wonder History — free to read, with narration.

The Day the Ice Road Opened to Lake Ladoga (1941) — a history story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History.

The Day the Ice Road Opened to Lake Ladoga (1941) — book cover — Wonder History — The Day the Ice Road Opened to Lake Ladoga (1941) — a history story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History.

Page 1

The ice groaned like a ship's hull as the reconnaissance party pushed out from Kokkorevo, poles stabbing ahead of every boot, the rope between the sledges singing taut. Two weeks old, the ice still flexed underfoot, and when the lead horse-sled reached the shore crack its foreleg punched straight through with a crack and a scream that froze every man's spine. The horse thrashed, driving its hoof deeper, black water fanning out across the snow in widening petals. Yefim threw himself flat onto a plank, sliding forward on his belly, enormous mittened hands closing on the breeching strap. Arkady dropped beside him on a second plank, spectacles fogging, bracing his boots against a frost ridge and hauling with both arms. Together they dragged, the animal shrieking, ice crumbling wet under its thrashing knee, until the leg tore free and the horse heaved itself up onto solid ice, steaming and shuddering. The men lay gasping on the planks, soaked to the elbow, while the black water crept and then stilled.

Page 2

Snow came sideways through the floodlights, and the ramp at Vaganovo steamed where buckets of lake water froze over the log corduroy. Sappers heaved young pine trunks into place, brushwood packed between, and still the slope glittered treacherous under the shielded lamps. The first loaded GAZ-AA nosed over the lip, engine screaming, and its rear wheels spun to a blur, flinging black slush. The truck slewed broadside, tail swinging toward the drop. Nadya threw herself into its headlight beam, crossing her flags hard over her head, screaming for the driver to brake. Yefim was already running, bellowing for sand, dropping to his knees at the rear axle, driving a shovel under the spinning tyre again and again. A dozen men piled in beside him, shoulders against the tailboard, boots slipping, hauling the truck's weight square to the ramp by main force. Arkady braced the auger crosswise under the chassis like a lever, throwing his thin body against it. The wheels caught. The truck lurched forward onto the frozen crust and held.

Page 3

The fir branches marched off into grey nothing, the only fence between road and open water. Arkady dropped to one knee, braced the brass auger against his thigh, and cranked it down through the ice. At twenty-five centimetres the flutes came up wet, grey slush smeared across his glove instead of clean white shavings. He opened his mouth to shout a warning. He never got the words out. A hundred metres ahead the lead lorry's nose dropped with a crack like a rifle shot, the cab plunging, the tailboard rearing up against the sky, its engine still roaring as black water sheeted over the bonnet. Yefim was already running, boots slamming flat skids across the ice, the coil of rope spinning out from his shoulder in one long throw. It slapped across the sinking cab's mirror. "Grab it, grab it now!" he bellowed, hauling hand over hand as the driver's door burst open and a man floundered chest-deep in black water, clawing for the rope while sacks of oats slid past him into the dark.

Page 4

The chain ran twenty strong from the plank barn to the tailboard, sack after sack swung hand to hand along it, and Yefim took each one onto his shoulder like it weighed nothing, bracing a boot against the wheel hub to post it up to the men in the truck bed. Arkady worked the middle of the line, arms out, catching the sacks mid-swing and passing them on without breaking stride. Then one came through rotten, frost-split along the hinge seam, and it burst open in Arkady's hands, flour exploding in a grey cloud and sheeting down over the snow in a widening drift. For one breath nobody moved. Then Nadya dropped her flags in the snow and threw herself flat on her knees, scooping flour back into her cupped mittens, and the whole yard went down with her — soldiers tearing off their caps to use as scoops, women on hands and knees dragging flour-crusted snow toward sacking laid out to catch it. Yefim bellowed for more sacking and knelt his huge bulk over the worst of the spill, sweeping it inward with both forearms like a man damming a flood.

Page 5

The drone came first, a buzzing thread above the wind, then the Junkers themselves, low and black along the line of fir branches. Yefim threw himself flat against the ice as the stick of bombs walked across the road, each one punching a geyser of white into the grey sky. The crack opened steaming, black water yawning where solid ice had been a breath before, and the lead lorry's front wheels dropped straight into it, engine screaming, tailboard rearing up. Nadya scrambled onto a hummock of ice and swung her flags wide, red then white then red, driving the following trucks wide around the burning wreck already crackling orange behind her. Arkady ran forward with two others, boots slamming down planks across the open water, bracing them with his whole gaunt weight while Yefim hooked the winch cable to the lorry's axle and heaved the crank handle round. Metal groaned, ice cracked further, and the truck lurched up and over, dripping, saved.

Page 6

The ramp at Osinovets stood taller than a man, a wall of sacks stacked shoulder-high against the timber rails, and the lorries kept coming nose to tail, each one rolling its load down with a thud and a grunt. Nadya shoved from below, bracing her boots and heaving a sack up onto the pile, when the whole stacked wall shivered and let go, sacks avalanching down onto the rails in a grey rumbling slide. Yefim lunged under the first falling sack, taking its full weight across his shoulders, staggering two steps and slamming it flat against a boxcar door before the next could crush Nadya's legs. She scrambled backward, flags clattering, hauling a second sack off the rail by its corner before the wheels could catch it. Arkady, unmoved, finished scratching his signature across the manifest, slung the brass-collared auger over his back, and turned without another word, boots crunching back out onto the ice alone, already shrinking against the white.

Page 7

The granite steps dropped to the river in a glazed sheet, every spilled bucket frozen into a waterfall slicker than glass, and Mitya's galosh skidded first. His bucket went clattering down ahead of him, his rope sled whipped sideways, and then the boy himself was sliding, arms flailing, straight toward the black chopped hole in the ice. He opened his mouth but no sound came before Yefim's huge mitten shot out and closed around the twisted wire belt at his waist, one-handed, the whole weight of the boy swinging and jerking to a stop above the black water. Yefim hauled him back up the glassy steps bodily, boots scraping no purchase, while Nadya dropped to her knees above them and hacked fresh notches into the ice with a bayonet, stabbing and chipping a ladder of grips. Mitya's clock banged against the stone, still ticking. He grabbed the new holds and scrambled the last metre on his own, chest heaving, galosh wire torn loose and flapping.

Page 8

Yefim came down the cellar stairs bent double under a flour sack, each step groaning beneath his boots, and dropped it beside the troughs with a thud that shook flour dust into the lamplight. Nadya followed with another sack hugged to her chest, grunting as she tipped it in, pale grain spilling over Praskovya's waiting hands. Praskovya plunged her arms in to the elbow, kneading fast, then swung her long scorched peel into the brick oven mouth, hooking out loaf after loaf steaming into the cold air. A distant blast rattled the boarded windows and plaster sifted down over the scales in a grey curtain; nobody flinched, Yefim merely steadying the shelf with one broad palm. Praskovya seized the first loaf off the peel, sliced it thick with her bread knife against her apron, and pressed the warm heavy end into Mitya's small hands before he could even raise his fists to ask. He held it to his chest like something alive, steam rising past his huge eyes, while his alarm clock swung and banged against his wired-together boots.

Page 9

The queue shuffled forward between heaped sleds and bundles, and the enormous man in the sheepskin tulup set his boots wide against the truck's tailboard, taller than any of them, reaching down to haul passengers up by the wrist one after another. He caught the tiny shaved-headed boy under the arms and swung him bodily over the tailboard, the brass alarm clock banging against the boy's knee as he went. Beside the platform edge a cardboard suitcase slipped from an old woman's grip and burst on the frozen planks, photographs skating out across the trampled snow in every direction. The round woman in the polka-dot headscarf dropped her bread peel flat and went down on her knees, bare hand scooping photographs from the snow before boots could grind them under. The square girl in the steel helmet planted herself at the tailboard's edge, waving her white flag to hold the next sled back until the suitcase owner was lifted clear. Breath steamed. Somewhere down the queue a child cried and was hushed.

Page 10

Planks hip-wide and taller than a tailboard slam down against the truck beds, and hands reach up to haul the evacuees over the edge onto them. Yefim braces one plank with his boot and lifts an old woman down bodily, setting her stockinged feet onto the snow as if she weighed nothing. Mitya scrambles down on his own, one boot and one wired galosh slipping on the wood, and lands sprawling in the slush before Praskovya catches his collar and hauls him upright. She swings her ladle from a waist-high steaming cauldron and tips hot kasha into his dented tin, pressing his fingers round it so he won't drop it. Nadya lowers her red and white flags for the last lorry, letting them hang slack at her sides for the first time in a night. Yefim swings himself back up into his empty cab, cranks the handle at his hip, and turns the wheel back toward the grey lake, the engine coughing smoke into the dawn.

About this story

Audience: general readers
Format: 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder History

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