And the men from the gun crews hadn't got tunics either.
They had been taken prisoner half-naked, as they were while working at the guns.
"That night it poured with rain and we all got wet to the skin.
Part of the roof had been smashed by a heavy shell or a bomb and the rest of it was ripped up by shrapnel; there wasn't a dry spot even at the altar.
Yes, we stood around the whole night in that church, like sheep in a dark pen.
In the middle of the night I felt someone touch my arm and ask:
'Are you wounded, comrade?'
'Why do you ask, mate?' I says.
'I'm a doctor. Perhaps I can help you in some way?'
I told him my left shoulder made a creaking noise and was swollen and gave me terrible pain.
And he says firmly:
'Take off your tunic and undershirt.'
I took everything off and he started feeling about with his thin fingers round my shoulder. And did it hurt!
I gritted my teeth and I says to him:
'You must be a vet, not a doctor.
Why do you press just where it hurts, you heartless devil?'
But he kept on probing about, and he says to me, angry like:
'Your job's to keep quiet.
I won't have you talking to me like that!
Hang on, it's going to hurt you properly now.'
And then he gave my arm such a wrench that I saw stars.
"When I got my senses back I asked him:
'What are you doing, you rotten fascist?
My arm's broken to bits and you give it a pull like that.'
I heard him chuckle, then he said:
'I thought you'd hit out with your right while I was doing it, but you're a good-tempered chap, it seems.
Your arm wasn't broken, it was out of joint and I've put it back in its socket.
Well, feeling any better?'
And sure enough, I could feel the pain going out of me.
I thanked him so he'd know I meant it, and he went on in the darkness, asking quietly:
'Any wounded?'
There was a real doctor for you.
Even shut up like that, in pitch darkness, he went on doing his great work.
"It was a restless night.
They wouldn't let us out even to relieve ourselves. The guard commander had told us that, when he drove us into the church in pairs.
And as luck would have it, one of the Christians among us. wanted to go out bad.
He kept on saving it up and at last he burst into tears.
'I can't pollute a holy place!' he says.
'I'm a believer, I'm a Christian.
What shall I do, lads?'
And you know the kind of chaps we were.
Some laughed, others swore, and still others started teasing him with all sorts of advice.
Cheered us all up, he did, but it turned out bad in the end. He started bashing on the door and asking to be let out.
And he got his answer. A fascist gave a long burst through the door with his submachine-gun. It killed the Christian and three more with him, and another was so badly wounded he died by morning.
"We pulled the dead into a corner, then sat down quiet and thought to ourselves, this isn't a very cheerful start. And presently we started whispering to each other, asking each other where we came from and how we'd got taken prisoner. The chaps who'd been in the same platoon or the same company started calling quietly to each other in the darkness.
And next to me I heard two voices talking.
One of them says:
'Tomorrow, if they form us up before they take us on farther and call out for the commissars, Communists, and Jews, you needn't try and hide yourself, platoon commander.
You won't get away with it.
You think just because you've taken off your tunic you'll pass for a ranker?