At The Gates - In

At The Gates - In the movie Enemy at the Gates, itself rather loosely adapted from one chapter of an excellent book by the same name, one of the most striking scenes is at the beginning of the movie.

The Soviets - Stalin - were desperate to stop the Germans - every bit as desperate as the stalinist Hussein or his minions are to stop us today.

A trainload of Soviet conscripts, unarmed except for their Communist Party overseers, rolls across the steppe to Stalingrad. On the east bank of the Volga, they detrain, and are herded to boats through thick artillery fire (which kills a number of them). The boats sail through artillery fire and an attack by Stuka dive-bombers that kills some of the boats, and kills more of the men packed on the decks. Some men jump and try to swim for it, and are shot by the Komissars.

The boats arrive on the west bank of the Volga, still under fire (shrapnel mows down more of them), and they climb a stairway and run down a street to stand behind a US-supplied truck. There, an officer hands out rifles - one rifle and five rounds to every two men. "Those without rifles, pick up the rifle when the man with the rifle is killed", the officers bellow. The conscripts are herded to a jumpoff position, realizing that this is not a good situation.

The whistle blows, and the men - armed or not - jump off and charge down a street toward a German position. Waiting rifles and machine guns mow them down like ripe wheat.

The survivors turn and try to run back to Russian lines. A machine gun manned by a KGB crew also mows them down. The few survivors, having no choice, continue the attack, stepping over bodies from their own group and several previous attacks. Almost all die - except the movie's protagonists.

But there we leave the movie to join the present day. In Iraq today, a similiar scene seemed to occur:

There was fierce fighting in Kut, to the south, where desperate Iraqis armed with rifles charged tanks in a suicide raid. "We mowed down" the attackers, said Lt. Col. B.P. McCoy.

The stories have been circulating for weeks: Ba'ath machine gunners driving Iraqi conscripts forward to the charge; Fedayeen press gangs rounding up civilians, Soviet-style, and in effect holding the families hostage to make the men and boys attack; stuff straight out of World War II.

Again - we really have to win this one.

Posted by Mitch at April 3, 2003 08:10 PM