The Golden Wheat Fields

1941 Lviv, Ukraine

The golden wheat rhythmically danced in the gentle breeze under the azure skies to the limit of Petro's vision. The whispers of wind shushed off the gleaming ocean of grain, accompanied by the musical coos of the mourning doves lit on the trees nearby as they awaited the coming harvest.

Petro stood at the edge of the road and listened for the distinct thump of a diesel motor to identify what field his father worked in today. Petro loved the meditative quiet and vast land that provided forty percent of the world's wheat supply.

A silhouette, like a mirage, danced toward him through the blondish fields of grain from a distance. Her yellow hair, evident as she drew closer, bounced like laughter. Alla, his neighbor, girlfriend and future wife, laughed as she drew closer.

"Why are you so serious, Petro? Live, laugh, and love. You are free to do so, dear," she said.

Petro smiled, took her hand, kissed her cheek, and turned her toward the vast acreage of gold-domed in blue.

"Yes, Alla, this land, our land one day, makes us free. To farm and raise our children, and they theirs.

The racket of a machine in labor broke the spell as a yellow bus rumbled to a stop and disrupted their reverent atmosphere like a foreign invader. Alarmed, the doves took flight almost as if an omen. Petro and Alla ran to the bus and returned his mother's wave from the vegetable garden. They stepped into the bus and moved to a seat in the rear, where Alla smiled and took his hand.

***

The gravel paved road passed through seas of gold, and the bus neared the village, a mile away. The bus brakes screeched, and the carrier stopped abruptly. Mr. Kurtz, the driver, jumped from his seat in panic and turned to them.

"Everyone off the bus now," he said and looked over his shoulder to the windshield. "Now! Move!"

Two military fighter planes, guns blazing, flew straight toward them and rapidly closed the distance.

Petro shoved the emergency door lever down, threw the door open. He lowered Alla to the ground as the planes spat bullets and tracers toward them. The pavement exploded from the ammunition in a straight path that led to the bus. Petro jumped to the ground, glass shattered, and metal split at the force of its impact.

He looked back at his trapped schoolmate's shattered bodies strewn in the aisle. The murderous pair of fighter planes screamed overhead with the German Iron Cross on the wings visible as they passed them.

"Run, Alla," Petro said, and they ran for a tree line as the fighters climbed higher in the sky and banked for a return attack. A concrete cook pit lay beside a farmhouse, and Petro threw the grate off, guided Alla in and lay beside her.

The fighters circled and strafed the bus again. The fuel tank erupted into a ball of fire. Explosions rocked the ground like earthquakes as bombs detonated within the village.

Alla sobbed, and Petro, though in shock, put his arm around her in the black soot of the pit. Armored vehicles and tanks emerged from the golden wheat field and encircled the village. They left a path of destruction as their treads of war scarred the peaceful landscape and made the golden fields bleed.

"We will wait here, Alla, until dark, and it's safe to move," Petro said. Small arms fire ruptured the air as the invaders overran the village throughout the day.

As the sun fell, Petro smeared soot on Alla's face and his. The sun sank over the horizon late in the day, and he led her away from town.

"Why?" Alla said. Petro pulled her close and whispered. "Power and greed, Alla, the world's war has come to the Ukraine."

***

A few minutes before midnight, tired and hungry, they arrived at her dark and abandoned house.

They moved on to Petro's house, where both families gathered. After hugs and tears, Petro sat with the men on the front porch and ate Babka bread and cheese.

"Petro," his father said, "tonight you must escort the woman to Kyiv. A truck leaves from the Pushkoff farm in an hour."

"Where will you go father," Petro said.

"The Ukrainian Reserves have been ordered to report to Odesa as soon as possible, we leave tonight," he said.

"I will go with you," Petro said.

His father stood and put his hand behind his son's neck and pulled him into an embrace.

"Son, we have lived free and have breathed this land. The land fed us, but we must pay the price for the peace we have profited from. If we must fertilize the soil with our own blood to live free, then so be it," he said, "You are too young at sixteen to fight, so I must ask you to do your duty to your mother and Alla."

"When will we meet again, father?" Petro said.

"No one can answer that, son," his father said, "but worse comes to worst, I can always be found here in our golden fields under the blue skies."

***

1947 Kyiv

The sun burned the fog off the Dnipier River as a costly peace burned through the smoke of the war. The cost of lives had been high, but each day grew brighter. Today Petro graduated from the National University of Kyiv with honors. Tomorrow he and Alla would marry. They needed joy, for both lost their fathers in the war, never to be seen again. After a brief honeymoon, they would all return to the village and reclaim the farm to begin their family's legacy anew.

Petro sat with his classmates and observed Alla in the audience beside his mother. Alla is beautiful and strong, and I am blessed to have her love. I am a fortunate man, he thought.

The speeches were too long, but soon he received his diploma. He walked across the stage and basked in the pride on his mother’s face. A glimpse of hope shone through her eyes on the war-torn canvas of her prematurely aged face.

Alla smiled with the radiance of a sun goddess and waved. Petro stepped off the stage to return to his seat, but a uniformed man from the Soviet Army took his right arm, jerked him away from his classmates, and forced him to a waiting car behind the stage.

"Get in," he said, pushed him inside and slammed the door shut.

"Petro Pshyk of Lviv?" a stern man in a black suit asked from the seat opposite his, "First in your class? Impressive."

"Yes, who are you, what is this about?" Petro said. "I have done nothing wrong."

"Of course you haven't," the man said. "Moscow requires that we send only our best for advanced degree training and you have been chosen. You should be grateful."

"There is some kind of misunderstanding, I am to marry tomorrow and return to Lviv to reestablish my family's wheat farm," Petro said.

"You don't understand, your future has already been decided and you will be departing for East Germany within the hour," he said, "to earn the Doctor of Veterinarian medicine."

"This is impossible," Petro yelled, "I refuse, I am a farmer."

"Bear in mind, the safety of your mother and fiancée depends on your compliance. We have learned that long goodbyes lend to certain disappearances of candidates," the Russian said. "You will be allowed to write them a letter to explain that you are honored to be of service to the Soviet state."

***

1950 East Berlin, Germany

Petro discovered a letter in his university postbox and recognized the handwriting as Alla's. The envelope's seal, as usual, had been broken by the state censors. The postmark, six months old, demonstrated the weak postal system. In the privacy of his shared dorm room, he sat on the bed, slid out the single sheet of paper, and read.

Dearest Petro,

My heart breaks to tell you that your Momma has died and gone to be with your father. We buried her on the edge of the lower wheat field that overlooks the brook......

Petro's eyes flooded with tears, blurred the remainder of the letter, and wept. He curled on his bed, clutched the letter to his chest, and cried, "Momma, Oh Momma."

Hours later, he read the remainder of the letter and became determined to find a way home to Alla, his land, and his country. Each day it became more difficult to remember her face, and he missed the joy of her presence and the music of her laughter.

Upon graduation, the state notified him as a Doctor of Veterinary medicine that he was to be assigned to a livestock farm in Eastern Russia. He would not be allowed to return home.

Petro, mortified, decided to escape and find another way home.

There was only one way to escape. He had to risk the barbwire, machine gun lined gauntlet and cross into West Germany before the Berlin Wall, the iron curtain was finished. Each day that passed made his chances more difficult. If he failed, he would be shot and join his father in the wheat fields of home. There he would dream of Alla and wait for her.

***

The next moonless night left barren shadows to the creation of man's electric inventions. Petro dodged the street lights like they were mines that would end his life. He bypassed many checkpoints and made his way to the city's northern outskirts, where the wall had not been completed.

He lay hidden on a dark hilltop above a cow pasture that gave him the line of sight to freedom. Machine-gun armed guard posts, three hundred yards apart, lined the border.

The amber glow of cigarettes exposed the border guard's positions. One hundred yards ahead lay a barbwire barrier like the mouth of a monster ready to shred and devour anyone who approached.

Petro crawled on his stomach and dropped into a drainage ditch fifty yards from his freedom or death. He would live or die free. To die in the attempt at liberty was better than living in the absolute oppression that controlled his current world.

He froze when a black shadow, darker than the night, moved to his left, then another. Petro realized he was not alone in his attempt. The shapes of three people crawled toward the barbwire undetected until the eerie musical note of barbwire severed sung through the air like a sour note in a symphony from the cut wire.

Bright lights like lasers scoured the earth until they landed on the escapees. Machine guns spit bullets and tracers across the field, and the three men scattered like mice. One ran for the border and flopped to the ground dead. The other two fired pistols that found their mark and extinguished the searchlights. They escaped to the left diagonally with soldiers in pursuit.

Petro realized the moment had come, but he must sprint like an Olympian. He ran across the open ground undetected and aimed for the cut wire paid by someone else's blood. This was his one chance to escape to freedom and return home to Alla.

A strand of barbwire caught his shirt, and he jerked as the barbs ripped the clothes and flesh from his side. Though winded, he pushed forward. He couldn’t stop. Gunfire erupted from behind as he crossed into no man's land. The open ground between oppression and freedom. Dirt kicked up on either side as bullets tore the soil from the earth.

Words in English from ahead competed with the staccato of death as bullets ripped the air from behind.

"Run, man, run," a chorus of voices cheered him on, "You can make it." The gunfire stopped as he jumped over a sandbag bunker and fell to a dirt floor to be surrounded by United States soldiers.

"Welcome to the free world," a soldier said, "You are the bravest people I've ever witnessed."

***

1992

Petro stepped off the airliner and down the steps to the tarmac in Kyiv. He had come home after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its oppression of Ukraine ended. He fell to his knees, placed his hands flat on the ground of his homeland and wept.

Forty-two years had passed since Petro had escaped from East Germany to the West, granted asylum, and immigrated to the United States. He worked at a Chicken Processing Plant, inspecting poultry for years. At the same time, he studied Veterinarian medicine at Clemson University since his East German degree was not recognized.

Upon receiving his Doctorate of Veterinarian Medicine and License, Petro opened a small animal practice in the town of Summerville, S.C. USA. He never married because he was betrothed to the love of his life, Alla.

A few letters of correspondence had successfully made the journey over the years, but they were few and far between. The Iron curtain had grown too strong. He received a letter in 1991 from a cousin that Alla had died in 1985; she had never married. Her last words were,

"Tell Petro I love him and will wait for him in eternity," the letter quoted.

He taught anyone who would listen to him the value of the freedom of speech, choice, rights, and livelihood, for he knew its price.

On the second day in Ukraine, he returned to his family's farm outside Lviv. The brook gurgled as he knelt at his mother's grave and his beloved fiancée, Alla.

"I am broken beyond measure that I couldn't come home for you, Momma. Alla, my dear Alla, you waited for me as I waited for you. Though forced apart, no one stole the freedom of our love for each other. Now, though late, we are free at last," he said.

Petro sat on the ground and soaked in the glorious panorama of his land before him.

"It only seemed like yesterday," he said and remembered her silhouette, like a mirage. He could see Alla dance toward him through the blondish fields of grain from a distance. Her yellow hair, evident as she drew closer, bounced like laughter.

Around her the golden wheat rhythmically danced in the gentle breeze under the azure skies to the limits of Petro's vision. The whispers of wind shushed off the gleaming ocean of grain, accompanied by the musical coos of the mourning doves lit on the trees nearby as they awaited the coming harvest. Free at last.

*** *** ***

Note by author.

This is a true story. Dr. Petro Pshyk returned to the United States for the remainder of his life. He was highly respected and loved in the community and profession. Dr. Pshyk was our neighbor, and I, his teenage employee, worked in his veterinary practice kennels throughout high school. He taught this author about freedom through his story and life. He believed that many people, especially in the United States of America, took their freedom for granted. Upon his death in 2011, Petro's remains were flown to his beloved homeland, where he is interred beside his mother and dear Alla in the golden wheat fields near Lviv, Ukraine.