I love a dragoon I love the young one I love the young one Right out of a brave regiment. He had barely arrived When he had to leave And his beauty-darlingSobs and cries Sobs and cries Begs him to stay. Stay with me my lovely darling Another night. Spend the night my love I'll wake you earlyI'll wake you early. —Song of the Russian Dragoons In the 10th Regiment of the Novgorod
Dragoons, few were younger and none was braver than Georgy Zhukov, the
kid from Kaluga Province. While their beauty-darlings sobbed and cried,
the 10th dashed in behind the German lines and with saber and carbine
cut down the enemy gunners. This was World War I, and twice young
Georgy received the coveted St. George Cross, awarded only for valor in
battle. In his black tunic, blue breeches and patent-leather kepi with
bronze double-eagle, he was a doughty figure in the Czarist army. This week, in a scene reminiscent of the Czarist days at their most
imperial, ex-Dragoon Zhukov, now a chunky, 59-year-old marshal,
reviewed the crack regiments of the world's largest army. Standing in
a pale blue Zis limousine, his broad chest loaded with decorations, his
hand in a stiff salute, Zhukov watched the young cadets of Russia's top
military academies goose-step their way through Moscow's Red Square in
unwavering, platoon-wide lines. The cadets wore smart new uniforms;
steel-blue with sleeves laced with gold-braided laurel leaves; their
officers wore striped yellow-and-white moir belts from which hung
short gilt swords. After the cadets came the steel-helmeted motorized infantry in green
armored cars, tanks with Tommy gunners at the ready, air-force officers
in new dark blue uniforms, and then the day's showpiece: a huge,
gleaming cannon, mounted on a rubber-tired platform, thought by some
military observers to be an atomic weapon . A 1,000-man massed band, from whose front line of trumpeters fluttered
scarlet banners and golden tassels, struck up a martial air. Rain had
canceled the air flypast, and Party Secretary Khrushchev, clad in a
fawn raincoat and bright green hat, had stolen some of the show by
escorting attractive Ekaterina Furtseva, a Moscow party official, to
the podium.
But now, after the trumpets, Zhukov, with all the pomp and ceremony
which the occasion demanded, went to center stage to deliver the
official speech.
