On the Terror of Shell Fire

Photo by Tyler Hicks, from The New York Times

Joshua Yaffa, in his recent “The Fight to Survive Russia’s Onslaught in Eastern Ukraine” (newyorker.com, June 7, 2022), writes, “The war has become, as one soldier told me, a game of ‘artillery Ping-Pong.’ ” This line is used as the piece’s tagline: “The war has become, as one Ukrainian soldier put it, a game of ‘artillery Ping-Pong.’ ” To me, this is a woefully inadequate description of eastern Ukraine reality right now. According to The New York Times, “Russian forces are firing about 60,000 artillery shells and rockets each day in the Donbas fighting” (“Shortage of Artillery Ammunition Saps Ukrainian Frontline Morale," June 10, 2022). I know what Yaffa is trying to get at by using the image: the constant back-and-forth exchange of fire. But “artillery Ping-Pong” belies even that, because what Russia is using for a paddle is about the size of an iron skillet, and what Ukraine is using is the equivalent of a plastic spoon.  

To be shelled by massed artillery is absolutely terrifying. E. B. Sledge, in his classic WWII memoir With the Old Breed (1981), wrote,

To be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most terrifying of combat experiences. Each time it left me feeling more forlorn and helpless, more fatalistic, and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that inexorably reduced our numbers. Fear is many-faceted and has many subtle nuances, but the terror and desperation endured under heavy shelling are by far the most unbearable.

Yaffa, in his piece, conveys this terror when he recounts the experience of a young Ukrainian paratrooper named Vladislav, who’d fought in a battle near Sievierodonetsk:

It was eleven at night when the Russian barrage started. Vladislav was lying in a trench he had dug in the forest floor. Shells from a 152-millimetre artillery gun started to land around him—large-calibre munitions meant to destroy armored vehicles and groupings of infantry. Vladislav described the experience of finding himself under a cloud of fiery metal. “It starts with a loud whistle and you feel something fly past. Then comes the explosion, followed by the blast wave. Last is the shrapnel, which swarms through the air like flies: thpht thpht thpht,” he said, mimicking the sound. “All you want to do is hide, not breathe, dig deeper in the ground.” The earth heaved and branches snapped as shrapnel ripped through the forest. A tree fell and covered Vladislav in his trench. The blast knocked him unconscious. When he came to, he was plagued by nausea and dizziness, which only got worse when he ate his Canadian-supplied M.R.E.s. After two days, he was evacuated to the hospital and treated for a concussion.

“All you want to do is hide, not breathe, dig deeper in the ground” – this, to me, gets us closer to the hellish reality of shell fire. “Artillery Ping-Pong” doesn’t cut it, unless you’re attempting irony. Maybe that’s the effect Yaffa was aiming for.