Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941-44

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There is a distant and arid peninsula, surrounded by a dark and brooding sea, where armies and fleets traditionally came to die, like wounded animals. Beneath the surface of this soil lies fragments of the legions of Hitler and Stalin, as well as the civilians they murdered. Bits of bone, perhaps part of a jawbone or teeth, a bent German identity disk, or a moldy Soviet belt buckle, and plenty of rusty bullet casings – this is all that remains of their erstwhile martial glory in the Crimea. Here and there, the land above is still scarred with trenches or antitank ditches or a shard of barbed wire, as well as the ubiquitous shattered concrete bunkers – monuments to man’s efforts to deny the inevitable. This was the land where Iron Crosses grew and Red Stars were handed out by the boxful, where reputations were made, or lost, in a matter of hours. These generations had no Tennyson or Tolstoy to note their heroics and sacrifices, just endless lists of awards and casualties, which were then lost.

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