The Battle of Chornomorske is a campaign episode in which Hans Reiter repeatedly approaches death without taking the precautions that might keep him alive. His conduct earns him a reputation for daring, but the account gives that bravery a darker explanation: he is seeking a bullet that might quiet his heart. The battle’s decisive scenes therefore hold two kinds of action together—the military advance and Reiter’s private, persistent desire to disappear.

The Assault on the Fort

During the battle, the 310th Regiment, and especially Reiter’s battalion, plays an important role. At a junction near Kirovske and Chornomorske, the company confronts a brick fortification. Reiter is struck by its poverty and apparent innocence; it seems to him almost as if children had built and manned it. With no mortar rounds available, the company decides to take the position by storm and calls for volunteers. Reiter steps forward first. Voss joins him, along with three other soldiers.

The attack splits across the fort’s flanks. When the men are about twenty yards away, rifle fire comes from inside. The three soldiers on the right drop to the ground, and Voss hesitates, but Reiter keeps running. A bullet passes close to his head; another brushes his right arm. Voss knocks him down, pulling him out of the immediate line of fire. Reiter watches as Voss crawls toward the fort, noticing the stones, weeds, wildflowers, and nails in the soles of his companion’s boots, as well as the small cloud of dust he raises. Then Reiter gets up and fires over Voss’s body while walking forward, as if the danger around him were not real. The fort is finally hit by a series of grenades from the soldiers on the right flank and explodes.

The Advance into Chornomorske

The capture of Chornomorske is Reiter’s second near-death in the battle. After the first attack is repulsed, his reserve battalion advances in a second wave, crossing barbed wire as artillery fires on Soviet machine-gun positions. Reiter begins to sweat and feels suddenly ill. The sea’s nearness strengthens his conviction that he is about to die. The advancing troops cross a field, pass through a garden where an old, white-bearded man watches from a small window, and kill five Soviet soldiers dragging a field gun.

In a pine grove, Reiter finds a statue that he takes for a Greek goddess. He touches its cold surface, unable to tell whether it is marble or another kind of stone. Its presence in that hidden place seems absurd; for a moment he feels he ought to ask it something, but no question comes to him. The brief encounter gives way to the battle’s next view: from a ravine, the sea and harbor appear below, with people crowding onto a ship, houses burning in the hills, and soldiers moving toward the city. Some Russian soldiers flee or surrender, emerging from fish sheds with blackened walls. The calm, nearly flat sea stands in stark contrast to the violence on shore.

Entry into the City and the Battle’s Ending

From the ravine, Reiter’s men descend toward a square dominated by two newly built, five-story white buildings. Gunfire comes from several windows. The other soldiers take cover behind trees, but Reiter continues toward one of the buildings as though he has not heard the shots. Outside, a mural shows an old sailor reading a letter; some lines are legible, but they are written in Cyrillic, which Reiter cannot understand. He climbs the stairs in a building without an elevator. A shot wounds his right arm on the first landing; another follows as he climbs. The wound bleeds little and the pain remains bearable, leading him to wonder whether he is already dead and to decide he should not faint before taking a bullet in the head.

Reiter kicks open the door of a flat and finds a young woman and two little boys. He tells her he will not hurt them and tries to smile as he backs away. In another flat, two closely cropped militiamen raise their hands in surrender; Reiter does not even look at them. Residents emerge from other apartments, appearing to him hungry or like pupils at a reform school. In one room he finds two old rifles beside an open window, throws them into the street, and signals his comrades to stop firing. Amid the capture, this small intervention marks a change in his conduct: the soldier who has repeatedly advanced into fire turns his attention to civilians and to ending the shooting around them.

The battle’s wider sequence continues beyond this encounter. Weeks later, during the attack on Sevastopol, the German advance is driven back; artillery repeatedly breaks up attempts to establish a defensive line, and the fighting becomes hand to hand in the trenches. Reiter’s Chornomorske episode thus belongs to a campaign in which survival is never secured by apparent forward movement. His earlier visions of dying near the sea return in the later assault, where he imagines sinking beneath the Baltic, Atlantic, or Black Sea into a forest of seaweed—or simply disappearing. The sea links these battles in his mind, turning military danger into an image of obliteration.

Narrative Significance

The battle’s action is inseparable from Reiter’s private orientation toward death. Before the assault, he has already risked himself in combat, not because he expects a military reward but because he hopes a bullet will bring peace to his heart. At Chornomorske, that impulse becomes visible in repeated decisions: he runs toward the fort despite the rifle fire, keeps advancing through the city despite being shot, and behaves as though a fatal outcome is already settled. The sequence makes battlefield courage unstable as a description. To his companions it looks like bravery; to the reader, it is also a form of self-erasure.

Yet the episode does not reduce Reiter to that wish. Voss pulls him down when the attack exposes him to fire, and Reiter later acts to protect civilians, telling a terrified woman he will not hurt her and signaling his comrades to stop shooting after throwing two rifles into the street. These gestures interrupt the forward drive of the assault. He can move toward danger with apparent indifference, but he can also recognize vulnerable people within the occupied city and alter what happens around them.

The battle’s imagery holds these contrary movements together. Reiter encounters a statue of a goddess in a hidden pine grove and cannot think of what to ask it; from a ravine he sees burning houses, people crowding onto a ship, and a sea that appears calm. The contrast between the still water and the violence on land prepares the sea to become more than a feature of the battlefield. In his later thoughts during the assault on Sevastopol, the sea is the place where he imagines sinking and vanishing, while a forest of seaweed waits below. Chornomorske thus joins military conquest to a recurring image of disappearance, without resolving whether Reiter’s advance expresses courage, despair, or both.

Narrative Significance

The battle’s action is inseparable from Reiter’s private orientation toward death. His earlier willingness to risk himself in combat is driven not by an expectation of military reward but by the hope that a bullet will bring peace to his heart. At Chornomorske, that impulse becomes visible in repeated decisions: he runs toward the fort despite rifle fire, continues through the city after being shot, and acts as though a fatal outcome has already been settled. What his companions might call bravery is thus also a form of self-erasure.

Yet the episode does not reduce Reiter to that desire. Voss pulls him down when the attack exposes him to fire, and Reiter later turns his attention to civilians: he tells a terrified young woman he will not hurt her, throws two old rifles into the street, and signals his comrades to stop shooting. These gestures interrupt the assault’s forward momentum. Reiter can move toward danger with apparent indifference, but he can also recognize vulnerable people in the occupied city and alter what happens around them.

The battle’s images hold those contrary movements together. In a hidden pine grove, Reiter finds a statue he takes for a Greek goddess and reaches toward its cold surface, yet cannot think of what to ask. From a ravine, he sees houses burning, people crowding onto a ship, and a sea that looks nearly flat. The calm water stands against the violence on shore; in the later attack on Sevastopol, the sea returns in Reiter’s thoughts as the place where he might sink beneath the Baltic, Atlantic, or Black Sea, with a forest of seaweed waiting below—or simply disappear. Chornomorske consequently binds military conquest to an image of obliteration, leaving the meaning of Reiter’s advance unresolved between courage and despair.