Let Our Fame Be Great (29 page)

And his reputation was about to plunge even further, for he used his little force not to fight the deserters but to settle his own scores. He persecuted a local political rival: Khamid Eneyev, the new head of the village council. Eneyev, along with a deputy, was riding home one night when Khutai's forces ambushed them. As it happened, the hapless deputy was riding on Eneyev's distinctive white horse, and was killed in his boss's place. The attack had failed and Khutai, fearing arrest, fled into the hills, joining up with the abreks, or ‘bandits' as the government called them, whom he had been supposed to fight.

In fact, at this point in his career, Khutai had done nothing to endear himself to anyone, but do not give up on him yet. He was to redeem himself in the eyes of his nation.

The Germans, meanwhile, were not sitting still. In October 1942, the town of Nalchik, capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, fell and the
Soviet 37th Army fled in panic before them, taking heavy losses. Units of the army were cut off in the valleys that reach down towards Nalchik from the mountains, and one of the only ways left for them to save themselves from capture was to retreat up the gorge of the Cherek and either cross over into Georgia, or into one of the parallel valleys.

The new military commander of the region, Major-General Zakharov, was concerned that the deserters hiding in the hills could threaten his army's withdrawal and on 1 November he ordered the NKVD to take deserters' relatives hostage. If the deserters had not surrendered within two days, he ordered, the hostages should be shot. The stage was set for the great tragedy that was about to engulf the Cherek valley, whence it would burst forth upon the whole Balkar nation.

The NKVD forces were not idle. Their first victims – listed as ‘bandits' in the army records, but actually civilians – were two Balkar men called Taubi Appayev and Musos Khasauov. Two more herders, from the Bashiev family, were shot a little later, though it is not clear what for. Soviet troops were still streaming in retreat through the valley, carrying their weapons. For the deserters, who were now very nervous that they were about to be hunted, it was easy to take the weapons of these demoralized soldiers and use them to defend themselves.

The army managed to largely extricate itself from the gorge, but one group of five soldiers had failed to manoeuvre their anti-aircraft gun up the steep slope out of the Cherek valley. Khutai's men stopped them and, on 21 November, taking two of the soldiers with them, they dragged the gun with bulls to within range of the village council administration, where Eneyev – Khutai's enemy – was based along with his allies in the village of Mukhol. The bandits opened fire, and had their enemies pinned down all day. They failed to trap Eneyev, who fled to the local hospital when darkness fell and hid with a small Soviet force based there. Over the next four days, the two sides faced off, the bandits armed with their anti-aircraft gun and the soldiers walled up in the hospital. Five soldiers were killed, according to the military records, before the soldiers managed to retreat. The military command lost patience.

General Kozlov, head of the 37th Army, ordered that the bandits in the gorge must be destroyed once and for all, with a verbal order to Colonel Shikin of the NKVD ‘to wipe the villages of Balkaria from the face of the earth, stopping at nothing'.

On 22 November 1942, Shikin passed the order on to the commander of a cavalry unit: ‘Liquidate the bandit group based in the villages of Upper Balkaria. Take the most decisive measures, right up to shooting on the spot, burning their buildings and property.' On 24 November, a detachment of 152 soldiers led by a Captain Fyodor Nakin was sent into the gorge. On their way in, they detained at least six local men, none of whom had any connection to the battle in the village centre, and shot them dead.

The Cherek massacre had begun.

Nakin's forces took up their positions overlooking the Cherek valley on 27 November 1942, and set their operation to cleanse the villages below them of ‘bandits' for eleven o'clock that evening. The valley held at least nine hamlets. Mukhol, home to the village administration and scene of the battle over the hospital, was further down the valley. The soldiers would have to pass through Sauty and Glashevo before they could reach it.

Other hamlets overlooked the path, including the little settlement of Kurnoyat, home to eighteen families, while Khutai's home hamlet of Kunyum sat on the other side of the river, and others – such as Upper and Lower Cheget – were further off.

Nakin divided his force into two. The larger half followed the left bank of the stream towards Sauty, while a smaller group followed the right bank.

While most of the troops prepared themselves, Nakin sent two soldiers – a Russian and an Azeri – to the hamlet of Kurnoyat to start carrying out his orders. The soldiers were welcomed warmly, fed and allowed to rest. In return, they warned the villagers that terrible retribution had come and that they should flee. On their return to the main force, they both admitted they had killed nobody. Nakin, enraged, shot them both. There would be no more mercy from the Red Army.

Bagaly Temirzhanova, then a 23-year-old woman, later gave testimony to investigators describing how two men from Kurnoyat – Yusup and Kumuk Sarakuev – came running into Sauty to warn them that the soldiers had arrived and were planning to kill everyone. The two men, who were her relatives, warned the fifteen or so deserters present to flee but the remaining villagers thought they were safe. The soldiers would not bother them, they thought, as did two men who had been invalided home from the front.

The only armed men left in Sauty had departed. It was defenceless.

One deserter called Edik was left as a look-out and he told Temirzhanova and her neighbours that the soldiers were indeed coming just as she was lying down to sleep, before moving on to warn everyone in the village. Despite her belief that the soldiers would not bother civilians, she went to her neighbour's house, where around fifteen people were gathered, all of them women or children apart from an 80-year-old man. That was when the shooting started. They had no idea what was happening until a couple more women found them in the morning, and said the soldiers were killing everybody.

The soldiers found them shortly afterwards, and started hammering on the door and demanding it be opened. Temirzhanova, and a handful of others, managed to jump out the window.

‘Just behind me was the son of Mustafa Temirzhanov, who was seven. It was just then that a grenade was thrown into the house. Everyone who was in the house was killed, and it ripped off the top of Mustafa's son's head and he just stayed there, hanging from the wall,' she remembered.

Sprinting from house to house, the terrified survivors desperately looked for a place to hide, but those who were still alive were too scared to open their doors and take them in.

As soon as the shooting started, the villagers instinctively gathered together in the stronger houses of the village. The village, as described by the climbers, was packed together in a warren, with connections between the houses and hidden rooms making it very hard for the soldiers to see where their prey could be hiding. A big group decided to hide in a house belonging to Teta Misirov, a neighbour, including Mukhadin Baisiev and his mother. Baisiev was at the time fifteen years old and he was already fortunate that the soldiers had knocked on their door but left without breaking it in.

When they arrived at Teta Misirov's house, around sixty people were already hidden there but with so many terrified and hungry children crying and screaming the soldiers found them quickly. When the people refused to come onto the street, the soldiers threw a grenade into the room, deafening Baisiev and killing many of the
desperate villagers. The survivors decided to come out, and the soldiers sent Teta Misirov to round up other hiding parties, telling them to come to a meeting. But the meeting was a ruse, and those who had survived the grenade were shot as they emerged into the daylight.

Among those who emerged was seven-year-old Tani Mamayeva, who said the soldiers lined them all up against the wall in the courtyard outside the house where they had been hiding. Several of the older people tried to move to the side, but could not escape, and started to read Muslim prayers before the shooting started. Mamayeva herself was trapped under the body of her mother, whose long shawl covered her. She had no idea all the others were dead. Her mother, wounded but still alive, begged for water so little Mamayeva, herself wounded five times, crept out to find some. As she emerged, however, she saw that the soldiers were still hunting – although they had now turned their guns on some chickens – and hid among the dead once more. The second time she emerged, the soldiers were snacking on apples, carefully removing the peel before eating them. She hid under her mother's shawl again.

The soldiers came back to check the bodies, including that of her mother who had died of her wounds by this stage. Mamayeva stayed unnoticed under the shawl for three days before managing to escape.

The soldiers set up their base in the village, and waited for survivors like Mamayeva to emerge. Tagii Sarbasheva was one of the group that managed to jump out of the window ahead of the grenade, but was later detained. She was not killed but, as she was escorted through the village, she saw how the women in the next-door house were lined up and shot.

‘We saw how they executed Kermakhan, Rakhimat, Galya and her daughter, and Mariyam, the wife of Baraz Misirov. Mariyam had her baby in her arms. A bullet hit the baby, and his little body flew about two metres, and it took off Mariyam's fingers and wounded her in the face, but she remained alive. She had the sense to pretend to be dead,' Sarbasheva remembered.

By a miracle, Mariyam managed to survive and crept to a neighbour's door. The neighbour, Khanshiyat Temirzhanova, saw her covered in blood, missing three fingers, wounded nine times and begging
for water. But she had no water, for her story had been even more terrible.

On the first night, she had heard the shooting near a house belonging to her family, and her father went to investigate. He had two sons and two sons-in-law at the front with the Soviet Army and had nothing to fear from soldiers. But he was shot on sight, his brains spilling out of his skull as he lay on the ground, so never returned to tell his terrified daughters and wife what was happening. Temirzhanova and her sister Fatimat went to look for him, Fatimat leaving her own six-month-old daughter behind.

Their other sister, Rakhyimat, was desperately ill, and stayed with her year-old son in the house.

The two women saw their father dead, and began to run when the soldiers saw them. Temirzhanova stopped when ordered to, but her sister did not and was shot, the bullet shredding her right breast and killing her instantly. Temirzhanova collapsed with fear, just in time to see her mother emerge into the yard.

‘They turned their guns on her and shot, and I saw everything, her neck just came in half, just like when they open a fish's belly. Without a sound, mother fell onto me and died instantly. There was a big stone nearby, and it's still there to this day, and blood from mother's wound hit this stone like a fountain, painting it red,' she said.

The blood possibly saved her from the soldiers, who may have assumed she was already dead, although one stuck his bayonet into her tunic without harming her.

When she entered the house, stepping over Fatimat, who lay in the doorway, she saw that the soldiers had killed her other sister in her bed, but that her niece and nephew had survived unscathed. They were both crying, and she could not manage to calm her niece, who was hungry and missing her mother.

Desperate, she stripped the still warm corpse of her sister and gave the little girl one last suck at the corpse's left breast – the righthand one having been shredded by bullets – before it lost its milk. This quietened the infant for a while, but they both would need more to drink, and the only water in the house was that being used to soak a sheep-skin. She gave that to the children, but it was salty
and only made them more thirsty, so after that she fed them on each other's urine.

They managed to hide, the aunt and the two orphans, until the third day, when the soldiers found them. Temirzhanova was calm, she said later, knowing that she would be killed. She opened the door when asked and walked outside, carrying her niece and nephew. The soldiers asked where her brothers were, and by a lucky chance she had a letter from the front in her pocket, and the soldiers left with it.

Five minutes later, two men talking Balkar – presumably allies of the Red Army – came and told them to hide, but she was past caring and just went home. That was the evening when Mariyam's weak voice begged her to open the door. Scared that the soldiers would follow the blood trail and track down her little group, she took Mariyam to a barn and left her there, before returning home to hide once more.

By this time, Nakin had communicated with headquarters. He had, he boasted, killed 1,200 people that first twenty-four hours, having lost just two people dead and five injured. ‘The whole population has rebelled,' he reported.

The vast number of people killed – which was, in fact, exaggerated – appears to have stunned Colonel Shikin, who demanded to know who they were and what weapons he had captured. Shikin warned his subordinate not to harm women and children, but instructed him to keep killing all the bandits' accomplices.

Nakin pushed on towards the main village of Mukhol, where he sought to drive out the deserters controlling it since the Red Army had pulled out. On his way, he sacked the villages of Glashevo, where sixty-seven people were killed, and Upper Cheget. This latter was partly spared since one of the soldiers in Nakin's detachment was born there, but it was still savagely attacked.