Greetings from Afar

The Old Guard Dies… Or Do They

There are two roads that lead from Mamontovka to Moscow. One of them is the M-8… a modern, four lane highway that is part of the North-South National Highewy System. It is soothe, well maintained and usually crowded. The other… the old, original Moscow-Yaroslavl road, is small, narrow and empty most of the time. Called the “Payanee Doroga” or “Drunken Road”, it twists and curves it’s way through switchback after switchback, as it meanders seemingly through every tiny village and hamlet in the North-eastern end of Moskovski Oblast. In the summer, it is a pleasant drive, if you have the time, and even though it is about ten miles farther, it is usually faster to follow the Dunken Road to Moscow than to contend with traffic on the M-8. In the winter, it is a suicidal fools errand to attempt passage, except when motivated by the most dire of emergencies, or unless you happen to live in one of the villages that it passes through.

One of the redeeming qualities of the old road is the fact that it passes through one of the most historic sites in Russia… in fact… in Europe. The site is marked only by a tiny roadsign giving the name of the village. No historical marker is necessary. Every Russian knows the name by heart… Borodino. It was on the fields of Borodino that Napoleon Bonaparte met disaster over two years before he met Wellington at Waterloo. It was Borodino… the valor of the Russian soldier and the fierceness of the Russian winter… led by a crochety, obnoxious, one-eyed old General named Kutuzov… that broke the might of France, and literally decimated what was then considered to be the finest army that ever marched across the face of Europe. Napoleon never recovered. His army died at Borodino. When he met the Duke of Wellington, it was with a force devoid of the hardened veterans who had swept him and the French Eagles across the face continent.

They say that there is a company of French Guards that still haunt the field of Borodino. They say that in the stillness of the night, you can see them rise from the mist around the little church that they once fought valiently to hold… a rear guard… a forlorn hope… buying time with their lives… allowing their Emperor time to make his escape. If you are quiet and do not disturb them, you may watch as they take up their injured comrades and as the lone officer, on horseback, sits like a statue in the frozen, empty night.

Drive down the Payanee Doroga, and park just off of the bridge on the outskirts of the village, just in sight of the tiny, shell scared church that sits alone in the midst of the silent field. Make the trip in the dead of winter, when the snow is deep and the air still and cold. If you sit there long enough… if you can fight off the chill and stay awake, you might see them. Many have. You might just see them as they form their tattered, forlorne little column and start the torturous march across the three thousand miles of frozen Hell that led the battered survivors back to France…. And in the morning… before the fresh snow falls, you will certainly see the bloody, frozen footprints that they left in the snow as they truged grimly toward the West. They’ve been doing it every night for over one hundred and eighty years, now.