Anastasia's Secret by Susanne Dunlap Page A

Some of the men hardly looked wounded, the ones in the convalescent ward who had been mended quickly and were destined to return to the front. But we also saw men whose faces had been half blown away by shells. Many were missing limbs or had holes in their stomachs too big to simply sew up, waiting for surgeons with enough skill to patch them together. The first few days I was there, it was all I could do not to run off and vomit. The smell, if nothing else, would have overpowered me. Burned skin has a particularly horrid scent. And then there’s the festering gangrene, more and more common as the hospitals—even the one in the Catherine Palace—ran out of supplies to keep wounds sanitary and as it took longer and longer for the wounded to be transported back from the front.
    Yet how can I speak of the horrors I saw when I recall that my mother and Tatiana actually stood by while the wounds were dressed? Even Alexei once held a basin so that the pus from a wound could drain into it. Mama assisted in the operating theater as well, carrying amputated limbs and administering drops of anesthetic. When I remember her calm compassion, her ability to face the grimmest circumstances without flinching, I cannot imagine why people believe her capable of betraying Russia.

    We nursed and read, and the war continued. As news came in, Papa was incensed at what was happening. “Those damned generals are more interested in their careers than in cooperating with each other!” he roared one night when we had all returned from our day in the hospital, exhausted and disheartened.
    “What is wrong, Papa?” Olga asked, the only one who was likely to get an answer.
    “Our telegraph lines do not go far enough to reach the First Army, which has pushed well into Prussia. And the generals fight over corps and contradict each other’s orders like children fighting over lead soldiers. If they would only keep to the plan. And I expected so much more from Nicholasha.” He was speaking of our uncle, Nicholas Nicholaevich. In all, with brothers and cousins and uncles, there were nineteen grand dukes in our family. Even I got them confused sometimes.
    In those early days of the war, Papa would spend all day in his study with his advisers. Every day when we returned home for luncheon I could hear them talking and arguing. Once I saw inside briefly when a colonel threw open the door and stormed out. Papa’s office was full of trestle tables covered with huge maps. I could see flags stuck into them at different places, and my father leaned over them and studied them intently, as if they might solve a great riddle if he looked long enough. But at the end of each day he locked his study and pocketed the key. None of us—not even Mama—were allowed in to see what he was doing.
    The war had an odd effect on everyone in Russia. At the beginning, wherever we went we heard blessings called out, just as in Moscow only with not quite as many people. “The Tsar and Russia! Victory over the German foe!” echoed after us as our carriage or motorcar passed. I didn’t recall hearing such jubilant, enthusiastic greetings since the time I was a very young child.
    But as the war went on and people grew tired of the death and hardship, the reaction cooled. I assumed that what affected everyone else were the same feelings we were having: anxiety about the war and sadness at the terrible waste of life. I had no idea then that there could be any other cause for the unenthusiastic greetings we got when we went anywhere.
    But still, despite the horrors I saw every day in the hospital, the war seemed far away and a little unreal to me. All these wounded soldiers were strangers. They did not exist in my life except as wounded or dying or recovering, and that was really everything I knew about them. I became quite good at telling who would live and who would not. It’s something in the eyes, a distance from the here and now. One poor fellow breathed his last right in the