What to read to preschoolers about the Great Patriotic War. The war is counting the last meters

Nikolay Bogdanov “Duel with a Ghost”

The enemy asked us many riddles, but this has never happened before: among forests and rocks Karelian Front An invisible armored train appeared. Always unexpectedly, at night or in a snowstorm, he crept closer to our positions, opened hurricane fire from all guns and disappeared.

Neither artillery nor aircraft were able to cover it, no one even saw it, and it caused heavy losses.

They asked the prisoners. They answered that they really have such an armored train, which is called the “white ghost”. And one mysteriously said that he was “afraid of nothing but his own shadow.”

And this riddle was solved by one of our modest intelligence officers, Siberian Grigory Surovikin. He was nothing special and was considered mainly a specialist in catching languages.

Here he had his own hunting method: he caught them, like gophers, with a snare.

He always acted alone. Putting on a white robe and putting on skis, he quietly sneaked into the enemy rear, found the ski path along which the Nazis walked from positions to headquarters with orders and reports, and set up loops of thin steel wire on it, always under a hill.

And he hid nearby, dusting himself with snow.

Having accelerated down the mountain, a fascist soldier or officer fell into a snare with his ski and flew nose-first into the snow. And, before he had time to come to his senses, the fascist found himself in the iron embrace of the hunter. Having given him a good blow, Surovikin gagged the captured man, tied his hands and, swaddled in a sheet, put him on his own skis and dragged him across the front line.

And to keep from freezing, he gave me a sip of vodka on the way and wiped my nose with snow. And the frightened fascist lay quietly, like a doll with its eyes opening.

So it happened that Surovikin was delivered to the headquarters of languages ​​in a high officer rank.

And then the hunter came across not a soldier or an officer, but an entire armored train, and what a one!

Once Surovikin climbed far behind enemy lines, went out onto the mountain, looked into the valley - and froze. He sees a miracle, not a miracle, a miracle, not a miracle, but an extraordinary fortress, as if sculpted from snow.

The gun turrets are white. The guns are white. The armored platforms are white. The diesel locomotive, clad in white armor, does not smoke. And this whole white fortress rolls along rails on white wheels.

- Look, what a real ghost you are! - whispered Grigory, who had heard a lot about the robber raids of the invisible armored train. - I wish I could catch this one!..

The hunter's heart began to beat rapidly. It's a good catch, but how can he take it when all he has in his hands are thin snares made of steel wire and a machine gun on his chest. And Surovikin felt the same way as when he met a tiger in the Ussuri taiga, when he had in his hands a gun loaded with small shot for hazel grouse.

Is it really possible to miss such a beast?

- You're lying, you won't leave! - he said and followed, thinking as he went what to do.

The armored train made loops, and he walked straight, uphill, and from above he saw that black stripes were painted on the roofs of the armored platforms and the diesel locomotive, like rails. An armored train will hide on the railway track, the stripes will merge with the rails, and it will become invisible from above.

"That's why it's so difficult for aircraft to detect." Suddenly the wind blew, the clouds broke, and the sun appeared. The clean snow around them sparkled with an unbearable brilliance.

The rocks and pines cast purple shadows. Frosty diamonds began to play on the tops and branches of the trees.

Tits shaded themselves among the branches. In nature, everything immediately came to life and became beautiful. Only the “white ghost” was not happy about the sun. His huge shadow was imprinted on the embankment railway so clearly that Gregory could count all his towers and cannons.

As if frightened of its shadow, the armored train accelerated and crawled into the first tunnel it came across, like reptiles crawl into holes at the sight of the sun, which helps vigilant eagles.

“So that’s why you’re afraid of your shadow!” Surovikin, hiding in the shadows of the trees, approached the rock in which the road builders had made a passage for trains, and began to observe.

There was a guard at the entrance to the tunnel. Bomb craters were visible. One unexploded two hundred was lying on the hillside, next to a small stack of hay.

Probably our pilots drove an armored train into this cave more than once.

“But can you break through such a mountain? - thought Surovikin. “We need to use some other method here.”

And he began to think about how he could destroy this armored beast. What a monster! If you miss it, it will make many children orphans.

But you can’t catch him in a snare and you can’t hit him with a machine gun. Surovikin rummaged in his pockets and sorted through the ignition cords that he kept in a tin box. It happened to him to blow up rails and small bridges; for this, a small portion of tol or dynamite taken from a captured mine was enough, but for an armored train you need too much explosives. Where will you get it?

Once again Surovikin looked around and noticed a lonely booth of a trackman below.

“Here’s where I can get a wrench,” he thought. “This haystack probably belongs to him.” Well, I’ll wait until night and unscrew the rails at the turn. It's high here. So the whole fortress will thunder downhill, into the river, along with all the towers and cannons.”

With this decision, Surovikin climbed into a haystack, hid in the very middle, warmed up and fell asleep. He sleeps and sees in a dream his house and the little goat Vaska. And the kid, playing, butts him painfully in the side.

- Go away, don't spoil me! - Surovikin pushed him away and woke up.

He looks, and it’s not horns that have dug into his overcoat, but iron pitchforks.

In an instant, the scout fell out of the stack and found himself face to face with the Finnish militia.

It seemed to the superstitious Finn that he had tricked the devil with a pitchfork. He wanted to scream, but in fear he only clanked his teeth, sat down in the snow, dropping the pitchfork from his hands.

“Here I’ll show you how to play around!” - Surovikin shouted, grabbing him by the chest.

- Rus, Rus, I have a uterus, I have children! - the old Finn, who knew Russian, babbled. “I didn’t do it myself, the commander sent me.” Herman wants hay...

- Why are you talking nonsense, do the Nazis eat hay?

But then Surovikin noticed a horse harnessed to a sleigh and softened:

- But still, why did the Germans need this hay?

- For mattresses. “The Germans like to sleep softly,” answered the Finn.

- What kind of Germans are these?

“And over there, in the armored train,” the Finn pointed out.

Surovikin looked down. It was a white northern night. Without turning on their headlights, trucks loaded with boxes of shells approached the tunnel. Apparently, the “white ghost” was preparing for another robber raid.

“If I don’t bring them hay in an hour, I’ll be kaput,” said the militiaman, “they’ll shoot me.”

Surovikin finally came to his senses and grinned. A desperately bold thought flashed through his mind.

“Okay,” he told the Finn, “an order is an order.” We must carry it out. Let's pile some hay!

At first the militiaman did not understand anything. And then, when the scout asked to help him drag an unexploded bomb into the sleigh, he trembled so much that his teeth began to chatter again.

“Don’t be a coward,” Surovikin told him, “everything will be fine, we’ll deliver them the hotel, hidden in the senzo, in the best possible way!”

When the bomb was loaded into the sleigh, he adjusted the cord and fuse, threw some hay on top, then rolled two cigarettes - he gave one to the Finn, and lit the other himself.

- You run into the forest, to those Finns who are partisans. Then your mother will thank you, and so will the children. And I myself will deliver the hay to the Germans!

He whipped the horse and, grabbing the reins in his hands, ran next to the cart, which was briskly moving down the mountain. And, turning around, he still managed to smile at the Finn. The machine gun hung on his chest, and he stuck his skis into the hay, from which a ignition cord stuck out, looking like a pig's tail.

Finn could not move and stood like a pillar, unable to take his eyes off the soldier who had started a deadly business.

The cart accelerated down the mountain faster and faster. Surovikin ran next to him. And when the horse began to resist and slow down, he whipped it properly and let it gallop. He himself deftly jumped onto the back of the sleigh, bent down, burned the ignition fuse with a cigarette and, not reaching the tunnel about a hundred meters, jumped off and rolled head over heels into a deep valley cut here by a stream. And the cart he directed accelerated into the tunnel.

The horse slipped past the guard soldiers and got stuck among the trucks with gunpowder and shells.

Seeing the hay German officer, who was in charge of the household, looked at his watch and said:

- Oh, this Finn began to understand the German order...

And these were his last words. The light running along the cord reached the fuse.

The explosion of the aerial bomb was so strong that one carriage with guns and turrets was even thrown out of the tunnel. And then the shells stored in the boxes began to explode. It seemed as if the entire tunnel had turned into a huge cannon barrel, from which fragments of rails, boxes, people, wheels were flying along with smoke and flames...

Finn became so scared that he screamed, grabbed his head and ran into the forest.

He did not see what happened to the Russian soldier.

But Surovikin remained alive. He got out to his family tired, shabby and without a “tongue”.

-Where is the prisoner? - the commander asked him.

And then Surovikin began to explain that he had no time for the prisoner when he met the armored train. He was so worried, he stammered and blushed so much that his story about the fight with the “ghost” seemed implausible.

- You probably have these ghosts and apparitions from an elevated temperature! - the commander got angry. - And your tongue is twisted, and your face is red... Go to the hospital!

The modest Surovikin did not insist.

“Okay,” he said, “armored trains are not my specialty.” I'm a language hunter. When I have a little rest, I will introduce you to the best... from deep in the rear.

And he willingly went to the hospital, as if to a rest home. The doctors found a bunch of illnesses in him, but when he slept in a warm place, in a clean bed, all the illnesses immediately went away.

And the invisible armored train disappeared and never appeared again. His actions were not noted on other sectors of the front either.

They began to think about nominating the soldier for a big award, but they were afraid that they would not believe him if he wrote on the award sheet that he had defeated an armored train one-on-one.

Soon Surovikin managed to catch a fascist staff officer with valuable information on the ski trail, and Grigory was awarded the Order of Glory for this.

And at the end of the war, a Finnish partisan detachment, composed of soldiers who did not want to fight for the Nazis, came to our location.

One partisan kept looking for a Russian soldier using his name pouch, on which the letters “G” and “S” were embroidered in the form of a monogram.

Finn explained that they lit a cigarette from this pouch together when they blew up a fascist armored train, and in the heat of the moment the soldier forgot this pouch in his hands.

But this was on another sector of the front, where Grigory Surovikin was not known. So they never met. And the Finn really wanted to see his unexpected friend and kept insisting that he was the bravest and most best soldier in the world.

Our people agreed with him and said:

“It’s true: you won’t find a braver Russian soldier anywhere.” Stay close to us - you will be better yourself!

Nikolay Bogdanov “Black Cat”

In one medical battalion there lived a black cat, Vaska, an amazing gourmand and also a dandy. Even at the front, all he did was wash his face, preen himself, smoothing his mustache with his paw. His black fur sparkled and his mustache curled upward.

The doctors and nurses loved Vaska and spoiled him so much that the cat began to eat the most non-cat food. He loved jam, chocolate, and candies. He was curious. It used to be that they would give him candy in a piece of paper, and he would work for half an hour, but still he would unwrap the paper and try the candy.

One day, for fun, they gave him a slice of lemon. The cat winced, but ate it. And then he twirled his tail angrily for a long time and looked at everyone touchily, as if he wanted to say: “We found something to treat... Ki-islo!”

But even after that I was still interested in everything. And he wasn’t afraid of war at all. Under the thunder of guns, he slept peacefully, and when he gasped especially loudly somewhere, he would wake up from sleep, squint his eyes: “Who’s disturbing my sleep?”, yawn - and again go to bed.

And suddenly, during the offensive, Vaska’s funny habit of trying everything came in handy.

One day a soldier comes to the medical battalion, hugging a barrel of sour cream and reports:

- Comrade doctor, I brought you a trophy! He pulled me out of a burning house. Why should the goods be lost in the fire? The wounded will find it useful.

The doctor smiled: there was no sour cream on the farm. They took a keg. But then the doctor thought: “What if this sour cream is poisoned?” The insidious enemies, retreating, even poison the water in the wells. Maybe they put poison in the barrel. How can we be here? Research? But the health battalion did not have a chemical laboratory. Should I try it? But who will decide?

And it’s dangerous to eat, and it’s a pity to throw it away... Suddenly someone remembered about the black cat:

- Let Vasily try it. Cats are good at sour cream. They won't eat anything bad.

So they poured a full saucer and said:

- Come on, Vasya, do your service, determine the quality.

The cat approached the sour cream, tasted it, licked his lips, straightened his whiskers with his paw and closed his eyes: “It’s good! It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten sour cream while on the road!”

I licked the saucer with pleasure.

Everyone looks at the cat - what will happen to him now? And Vaska purred, curled up and fell asleep. The cat is sleeping, and people around are worried.

“Our Vaska was poisoned,” says the nurse. - Look, his claws are already stretching out... He's dying, poor thing!

“No, he sees mice in his dreams,” says the orderly. - That’s what tunes the claws to them!

And while they were arguing, Vaska woke up, stretched - and again for sour cream! Well, they gave him more. And sour cream went into borscht and dumplings: the trophy came in handy.

Another time, a truck drives up to the battalion tents, and slightly wounded soldiers carefully disembark from it, each with a rifle in one hand and a jar of jam under his arm.

- Comrade doctor, accept a gift for the wounded. Found in a landowner's house. Slasten was a fascist landowner. Seven varieties of jam.

Raspberries are good for colds; Here are cranberries with nuts - it quenches your thirst... Sorry, one jar was broken!

The doctor takes the jam - and again to the black cat:

- Well, Vasily, check it out!

And the curious cat is already looking into the jars himself. I examined everything one by one. The only thing he didn’t like was the cranberry, but he tried that too.

The soldiers drink tea with jam and praise the black cat:

- Oh yes we have a cat, oh yes Vaska, scientist chemist!

- A hero, he risks his life!

- We got the right cat!

Vaska walks among them, arches his back, as if pleased that he was useful in the war, and purrs in response:

“Prr-correct, prrr-correct...”

Everything went well for him.

But one day they brought the most ordinary milk to the sanitary battalion. In the city we captured, the Nazis burned everything, but left the store with dairy products. It is full of milk, cheeses, butter. Big job for Vaska!

They poured him some milk. The cat began to try. Suddenly he jumps off the saucer, wipes his mustache, shakes off his paws and looks at everyone. Something wrong! And his stomach immediately began to hurt.

The entire medical battalion was alarmed: the black cat was poisoned!

The wounded are worried, the sisters are almost crying. The doctor gives the cat medicine. They forced Vaska away. But after this incident the cat went on strike: he didn’t want to try anything, and it was over.

They began to persuade him. They even shamed me:

- Why are you, Vaska, chickening out?

No cat! He doesn't eat sausage or lard. I prescribed a diet for myself. He lost weight and his fur became dull. He walks around gloomy and doesn't even purr.

They began to think and wonder: what to do, what to do?

And then spring came, and the war ended in our victory.

By the summer, all the wounded were discharged from the medical battalion, and Vaska finally recovered. He was looking for some medicinal plants, chewed them and cured himself. He resumed his former dapper appearance - his fur shone again, his mustache went up - and again leaned against the delicacies.

Sometimes chief physician asks him:

- Well, Vasily, if war happens, will you come with us again?

Vaska bends over, runs her black side over his boots and purrs:

“Okay, let’s get going...”

- I know you are a brave cat.

“He’s brave,” Vaska answers, “he’s brave...”

That's the whole story about the black cat.

Nikolay Bogdanov "Novichok"

And in war they like to laugh at newcomers. If an unfired soldier gets into the company, there will definitely be jokers to make fun of him. “That’s how it is with Bobrov,” the lively, funny old-timer of the company, soldier Vasyutkin, pestered him. A savvy, dexterous guy who was a hairdresser before the war. So nimble, so nimble. Since the beginning of the war, he has never been wounded, and already has a medal “For Courage” on his chest.

And Bobrov came from a steppe collective farm, a slow Siberian, lanky, calm. And, despite such a Siberian character, when he got to the front line, at first he was scared. True, belatedly, when the bullet whistles through, he will bow his head; the mine will explode and fragments will fly past, he will sit down.

Vasyutkin will hit him on the helmet with a bayonet, he will fall to the ground. And everyone laughs:

- What, it didn’t break through? Look, look for it, it has your initials on it! They cast it especially for you! Ha-ha-ha!

Bobrov did not immediately understand that this was a joke, and asked without offense:

“Friends, don’t scare me too much, otherwise I can get angry when I’m scared and can cause trouble.”

Everyone was still laughing even harder.

They somehow sent them in secret - Vasyutkin as a sentry, and Bobrov as a guard.

On the way, Vasyutkin kept worrying:

- Bobrov, if something happens, won’t you drift away? A? After all, a secret is a risky business... We will be completely alone, ahead of our positions. In no man's land... Keep your eyes peeled!

- Yes, it’s not easy, there may be something wrong here! We are watching them, and you see, they have looked out for us... Before you have time to look back...

- Nothing.

- Well, what if what happens? Can you handle a grenade well? Is your rifle okay? Can't you celebrate a coward?

- If I'm not scared...

- Please, don’t be afraid, perish yourself - help your comrade... Act according to your conscience.

- I will act according to the charter.

- That's it, as it should be...

Frankly, Vasyutkin had somewhat forgotten during the war what was said in the combat regulations; he considered himself an experienced enough fighter to act according to his own ingenuity.

And the inexperienced Bobrov, going to the position, kept trying to strengthen himself with the science he received in the reserve regiment. “An ordinary trench, even if it’s in front of the positions, what’s wrong with that? The regulations say: the enemy ran up to the trench, first meet him with a grenade, then besiege him with a volley from your weapon, and then, with a cry of “Hurray,” turn to bayonets. That's all. What’s so tricky about that?” - he thought and, having calmed down, remained silent.

But Vasyutkin did not let up:

- Most importantly, don’t get lost. There is no situation from which there is no way out. We are in white coats, our helmets are smeared with toothpaste. Invisible... Whoever we are, we will kill everyone ourselves! Don’t we have comrades, aren’t we alone? Two grenades are two friends; You have a bayonet - well done - still a fighter; I have a machine gun - that’s forty soldiers!

So Vasyutkin counted almost a company.

Only when he had to crawl through the snow did he become quiet. In the trench he put his finger to his lips and whispered in his ear:

- In fact, you and I are safest here... If, say, the enemy begins artillery barrage... fills our trenches with mines... smashes the dugouts with shells... how many of ours will he kill? And you and I don’t care! We're in no man's land. She is not being fired upon. So don't be timid, brother.

Bobrov was not timid, he was just bored. It was a dull night. No moon, no stars. Whitish sky, whitish snow.

You can't see anything around. And there is no one. I want to sleep. And he dozed off all the time. And how insidious - he slept standing up, but dreamed that he was fastening and not sleeping...

Vasyutkin stayed awake for two. He looked forward and looked back, but still did not notice how the fascist spies crawled up to the trench itself along the hollow from the rear.

Suddenly everyone in white, like ghosts, rose from the snow and wheezed:

- Rus, give up!

Vasyutkin, as watchful as a hare, immediately jumped out of the trench, fired a burst from his machine gun and disappeared into the whiteout.

But the dozing newcomer remained. When the Nazis fired a volley of machine guns after Vasyutkin, Bobrov ducked down, as always, late. But he was not hit in the trench; the bullets passed over the top.

- Give up! - Bobrov heard and at first thought that they were playing him again.

But what kind of secret jokes can there be? No, the number will not work! He was so annoyed that he wanted to grab the rifle by the barrel and beat the mockers with the butt like a club. Look, they’re crawling towards him from all sides, like ghosts, you can’t tell him apart from the snow. Everything is in white, only their faces become dark spots between the sky and the earth... It’s scary, of course... And the muzzles of the machine guns turn black, like the faces of arctic foxes...

And then Bobrov seemed to turn over. He became so angry that his enemies were trying to scare him even worse than their own, he had never seen the white light. He grabbed a grenade and piled it up! Thunder and lightning! He bent down and through the parapet - the second one. The fragments flocked overhead like iron sparrows. Without hesitation, he leaned out of the trench: fuck-fuck - the entire clip from the rifle, and, without allowing the enemies to come to their senses, he jumped out and shouted “hurray” with all his might. And with a bayonet at the ready - to attack.

This is how a company or platoon could act, and he did it all alone, exactly according to the regulations.

But it turned out as planned. Who could have expected that one soldier would act as a unit. It seemed to the Nazis that they had run into a big ambush. And the “language hunters” took to their heels.

And they disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared, as if they had disappeared.

- Hit! Hold it! - Bobrov shouted and couldn’t find who to hit or who to hold. Suddenly he came to his senses and froze from a terrible guess. What if it was a joke again and he was deliberately frightened by his people and that nasty Vasyutkin? And he fired in vain, like a coward and a loser...

Something stirred in the snow. Bobrov noticed that he had stepped on the floor of his white camouflage robe. And someone is fidgeting in the snowdrift, trying to get up.

- Stop, you bastard! - Bobrov roared, imagining that it was Vasyutkin. He jumped on the mocker in order to properly poke his nose into the snow as a warning. And then I realized that this was not it... The mocker had a mustache... And on his head was a cap with ears, the kind worn by fascist skiers.

In an instant, Bobrov realized that this was the enemy. Y got even more angry. Well, they make fun of their own people, okay, where did they get it into their heads that a newcomer should be timid?

- I’ll show you “Rus, give up”! I'll teach you not to scare newcomers! - he said, twisting his enemy’s arms behind his back and poking his mustache into the snow.

Our soldiers, who arrived in time to shoot, barely took the fascist who had swallowed a fair amount of snow from him.

- Easier, easier, it’s language!

- I'll show him how to loosen his tongue! Why did you want to shout to me: “Rus, give up!” Enough, I won't let anyone laugh at me! I'm tired of it! Then they joked their own jokes... Now these devils began to creep up... No, you're being naughty!

- Get down! - the soldiers threw him into the trench.

The Nazis opened rapid mortar fire at the scene of the noise. Yes... ours barely made it out alive.

And only then did they figure out that Bobrov killed three of the attackers on the spot with grenades, killed one at point-blank range with a rifle, and took one prisoner.

- Five-zero in his favor! — Vasyutkin dashingly reported to the platoon commander.

He was found, barely alive, nearby in a ravine. The fascists broke the legs of an overly lively soldier with an automatic burst when he tried to run away from them. After bandaging and a glass of alcohol, Vasyutkin perked up, stood up on the stretcher and saluted his superiors.

- Where were you, Vasyutkin?

- Showed ingenuity! Wounded by the first salvo, he buried himself in the snow like a grouse. I was waiting for mutual gain! — answered the cheerful Vasyutkin.

- So Bobrov alone dispersed the whole gang?

- Yes sir!

- Well done, Comrade Bobrov, congratulations on your baptism of fire. I'll nominate you for an award! - said the commander.

- Glad to!

- In the first skirmish and such luck... How did you do it so famously?

Bobrov was confused: according to Siberian concepts, “valiantly” meant “bad.” He should have answered: “I acted according to the regulations,” but he hesitated, like a schoolboy on an exam from an incomprehensible question, and, blushing, answered:

- Yes, so... I was too scared...

Everything went crazy here. Even the commander laughed:

- Well, Bobrov, if you act like this out of fear, what will happen when you get brave?

He looked at the cheerful faces of the soldiers and, very pleased that a new good fighter had come to the company, added, frowning for sternness:

— Stop making jokes about newcomers! Clear?

Nikolay Bogdanov “Red Rowan”

For three days the battle rumbled incessantly on the edge of the Bryansk Forest. It's just a stone's throw from the village of Kochki. And on the third day the Germans burst into the village. Without getting off their motorcycles, the Nazis rode up to every house and shouted:

- Rus, come out! Schnell!

They drove young and old to the battlefield to collect weapons and bury the dead.

Together with Arseny Kazarin, the collective farm groom, who was now left without horses, his granddaughter, the orphan Alyosha, also went.

They trudged behind everyone, a bearded grandfather and a barefoot boy carrying two shovels on his shoulder at once.

When Alyosha saw our killed soldiers, he cried. The face, drenched in tears, wrinkled so that all the freckles merged into one.

“Be quiet,” said the grandfather, “this is war!” Instead of crying, it’s better to count how many fascists our people shot! It’s not for nothing that ours died... Eternal glory to them!

And the grandfather began to bury the dead right in the trenches where they died.

The Germans ordered weapons to be taken to large trucks:

- Alley, alley, come here!

The grandfather groaned angrily, barely moving under the load of machine guns and boxes of shells.

- They're so greedy! - he cursed, returning to the battlefield. - Be careful not to choke...

Then he disappeared somewhere. Alyosha did not immediately see him. Grandfather was dragging an anti-tank gun behind him. Having dragged her into a dugout under a rowan tree, he began to deftly bury her in the same grave as our artillerymen.

- Grandfather, why are you doing this? - Alyosha was surprised.

- That's how it should be! - the grandfather shouted at him and, looking back, scooped up the oil that had flowed from the damaged tank like black blood with his soldier’s helmet.

He soaked his overcoat with oil and covered the gun breech with it.

- Now it won’t rust!

Scratching the itchy spots on his legs, Alyosha quickly began burying the treasure, pressing on the shovel so hard that his heels hurt. He already guessed what his grandfather was up to. And my grandfather put one box of shells after another into the hole: they’ll do!

“Mark the place,” said the grandfather, wiping the sweat with his sleeve.

“It will be noticeable,” Alyosha answered. - You see: all the roots have been cut off. The rowan will dry up.

- Yeah, that means it’s under the dry rowan tree! Let's remember.

Grandfather looked at the Germans, who were walking around the field with their sleeves rolled up and were so carried away turning out the pockets of the dead that they did not notice anything. He grinned:

“Wait, a roast rooster hasn’t pecked you on the top of your head yet!”

Alyosha did not understand his grandfather’s perky words.

“You know, grandfather,” he said, “the Germans say Hitler has already entered Moscow.”

“I wanted to take my boots off Moscow, but I didn’t know how to take my feet away from Moscow.”

-Who is this, grandfather?

- Yes, anyone who comes to us. I myself beat such people.

Alyosha looked at his grandfather. All his life he only remembered that his grandfather was tinkering with the collective farm horses.

- When did you have time, grandfather?

— And in the eighteenth year... The Japanese climbed from Pacific Ocean, the British - from the frozen sea, the French - from the Black Sea. You can’t count them all! And the German, just like now, walked away from the sunset. At first they also pushed back our units, but when all our strength rose, we swept them away like a broom.

- And you beat them yourself, grandfather?

The grandfather held the spade tightly in his hands:

“We had to beat everyone.” Once such a miracle happened on the Arkhangelsk front - I remember now. We see soldiers in skirts coming towards us through the swamps. Checkered skirts, bare knees, yellow shoes - well, these are pure women who have taken up arms against us. The guns are held on the hip and the pipes themselves are smoked. We even found it funny. And then we attacked both frontally and from the flanks - we didn’t miss a single one. They were beaten and several were taken prisoner. So we gathered them and asked: “Who sent you, the young men? Whose are you?” - “And we, they say, are the Scottish arrows of the English king.” - “Oh, you are the English king! OK". We took off their skirts and sent them back. Yes, and they punished them to the English king: “I liked the skirts, send more!”

The boy laughed: what a grandfather he is!

And the grandfather looked at the Germans again and spat:

- Look at the rolled up sleeves! Wait, you wouldn't have to roll up your pants!

As they left, Alyosha and his grandfather turned around and looked for a long time at the railway track running nearby, at the blown-up bridge over the Kupavka River, at the hillock under the rowan tree.

Twice winter covered the graves of the first war heroes with white snow, and twice spring flowers bloomed on them. But the rowan tree did not wither, as Alyosha thought - no, it grew, became taller and thicker, and young, lush bushes rose next to it.

Alyosha often came to the hill under the rowan tree. Will you soon be able to dig up the treasure?

It was the third year of the war. The people became impoverished and suffered under the Nazis. Having put on his bag, the grandfather wandered around the Villages, collecting alms. But then one day, coming home, he whispered to his grandson:

- Get ready, thunder is roaring!

Shots rang out in the forests more than once, and trains blown up by partisans crashed downhill with a roar. But such thunder had never been heard in the village of Kochki. He was a hundred times stronger than that that raged then, in the summer of 1941.

“It’s time,” said the grandfather, “our main force is coming!”

Alyosha, as if for a holiday, put on his best jacket and, taking two shovels on his shoulders, went into the forest with his grandfather.

They approached the rowan tree, the grandfather looked - and it was red, like blood. Rowan berries stuck around it, larger than on all the other bushes.

“Ehma,” the grandfather was surprised, “how red the rowan berry is!”

Alyosha wanted to pick a berry, but didn’t dare: he remembered that this rowan tree was over the grave.

The grandfather struck with a spade, and Alyosha began to dig, pressing with all his might on the shovel. The earth was compacted, it was difficult and dangerous to dig: the Germans could see.

Trains raced along steel tracks through the Bryansk forests to the east. German tanks, guns, and soldiers rushed by in the roar of wheels. Train after train passed close to each other, every ten minutes.

Through the thickets of bushes, the grandfather looked at them with greedy eyes, like a hunter, choosing better prey.

Alyosha was tired, sweat was pouring off him. The pit was already up to his waist, but there was still no gun.

“Grandfather, did someone really steal it?”

“No,” said the grandfather, “this treasure has a guard... And then something clinked against the shovel.” Its sound echoed straight into Alyosha’s heart.

- Dig quietly, don’t do any damage.

The grandfather, feeling the barrel with his fingers, began to carefully rake away the earth with his hands.

Soon the old man and the young man pulled out a cannon, covered with the oiled overcoat of the killed artilleryman, and began to install it under the tree.

- Eh, there’s nothing to wipe with! - the grandfather was worried. - Castle in clay, overcoat in clay.

“And here,” said Alyosha, “my clothes!” - and tore off his jacket.

- Let's! For a big cause, why regret it!

Alyosha did not regret the new jacket. And soon the cannon was ready for battle.

Grandfather did not know how to handle a complex sight and aimed in a simple way: opened the shutter and looked into the barrel. Alyosha looked after him and saw the bridge trusses in the circle of light. The old man spread the frames, drove the coulters into the ground and loaded the projectile, choosing a longer cartridge case. He was not mistaken: it was armor-piercing. And, like an animal on a hunter, at that very moment an armored train appeared on the rise. He was hurrying at full speed somewhere to the east, flaunting huge towers with many cannons.

- Pull! - the old man whispered to the boy holding the trigger.

Alyosha pulled and immediately fell from the thunder of the shot. The gun jumped up, pushing the grandfather. Alyosha rushed to him: “Grandfather is missing!” But the grandfather quickly got up. And where they were shooting, something whistled deafeningly. A stream of white steam escaped from the armored locomotive, and the train stopped right on the bridge.

- Oh yes we are! - the grandfather shouted. - The boiler has been broken! Well, come on, come on!

He quickly began to aim the gun, looking into the barrel again.

The Germans looked out from all the viewing holes and through all their binoculars: where did the shot come from? All the guns of the armored train were ready to open fire, moving their barrels.

Fifty guns against a small cannon.

But the grandfather was not timid. He aimed to hit the monster with another projectile, choosing a special one, red-headed.

- Grandfather, look! - Alyosha shouted, grabbing his hand.

The next German train appeared around the bend. The old man looked and froze:

- We didn’t have time to warn you... There was no signal... Now... Oh, and he’ll hit them!

The driver increased the speed in order to accelerate to take a steep climb after the slope. The wheels of the locomotive were spinning madly, and behind it the wagons and platforms with heavy tanks rumbled heavily.

And all this colossus with full speed crashed into the tail of an armored train. From the terrible impact, the front train bent, hunched over and began to crumble into pieces. And the black bulk of the attacking steam locomotive, shrouded in steam, slowly slid along the rails, clearing the steel boxes of the armored train from them, like a plow. The rails with sleepers heaved, twisting like a corkscrew. Armored platforms, along with people and guns, fell down the slope and into the Kupavka River. The driver turned on the brakes, but it was too late: fire and smoke were spraying from under the wheels, and the cars were climbing one on top of the other. Heavy tanks fell off the platform and flew downhill.

The forest echo multiplied the roar and rattle of the crash.

And suddenly there was such an explosion that my hair stood on end. The old man and the little one crawled away on all fours, they wanted to run, but they remembered about the cannon.

They returned for it and, without looking at what was happening there on the rails, harnessed themselves to the drawbar and dragged the cannon into the forest, over stumps and hummocks.

And for a long time they could hear the rumble, crackle and whoop behind them...

This story was recorded from the words of Suvorov soldier Alexei Kazarin at a gala evening on February 23 in the Red Banner Hall of the famous Suvorov Military School on the Volga.

After Alyosha with memories of civil war The speaker was the gray-bearded corporal Arseny Kazarin, who now serves here at the school in a management position.

Nikolay Bogdanov “Komsomolets Kochmala”

Pilot Afanasy Petrovich Kochmala was the favorite of his regiment. Not a single meeting, session, or commission could take place without him; he was chosen anywhere and everywhere. And he didn't refuse. The only thing he didn’t like was speaking at large, solemn meetings: unfamiliar chairmen often confused his last name. They will say it happened:

- I give the floor to comrade Heap... small!

And the audience will laugh. He will appear on stage, but he is not tall, and if there is a high platform, you won’t be able to see him behind it, only his nose sticks out, like a sparrow that has flown into a birdhouse.

Well, and again there is laughter in the hall.

And no matter what he said, everything seemed funny, although he did not think to make anyone laugh and very rarely smiled.

That’s what happened to him during the war. The pilots arrived from the first air combat, they began to report who shot down what.

One shot down a cadet, the other a Messerschmitt.

- And I knocked over the sausage! - Kochmala reports.

Well, everyone laughs, of course. What's so funny? After all, everyone knows that a tethered balloon is called a sausage, from which they observe the battlefield, and it is not so easy to shoot it down: the balloon is guarded by both anti-aircraft guns and fighters.

They began to introduce Kochmala to the order, and the pilots joked:

- For the sausage!

Even when he reported the air reconnaissance information to the commander, they still expected something funny from him.

Here he unfolds his tablet and points to the map:

— At the bend of the river, I noticed one fake one among the haystacks, something disguised under it: either a radio station, or an observation post...

- Why do you think so?

— A path leads to this haystack from the river. I dived lower - I saw a bucket of water standing by the haystack... Does he really want to drink the hay?

Having heard such a report, the mechanics laughed all evening. But the attack aircraft hit the haystack and were not mistaken - the Nazis were under the hay.

They began to send Kochmala as the commander of a battle group.

One day he leads six fighters over an enemy highway. There was no one on the asphalt, as if swept away with a broom: no cars, no soldiers. The Nazis did not travel on a clear winter day; they were afraid of our aviation. There are coniferous forests covered with snow all around. Quietly, quietly, as if everyone had died out.

Suddenly Kochmala commands:

- Behind me! Let's attack!

And rushes into a dive towards a pile of young fir trees.

The pilots dive and wonder: why is he doing this, on whom, on the Christmas tree? And Kochmala hits the trees with cannons and machine guns, and the pilots see a miracle: some trees are falling, and others are in different sides are running.

It has never happened in nature before that Christmas trees scatter!

It turned out that the Nazis, disguising themselves from aviation, began to walk around with Christmas trees on their shoulders. You look from above - a tree, and below it - a soldier. You won’t pay attention to the grove, but underneath it there’s a whole battalion.

- How did you guess? - Kochmala’s comrades asked.

- Very simple! I look: large forests are covered with snow, and along the road the fir trees are green.

Wherein simple explanation For some reason everyone is laughing again.

And only no one laughed when they heard about Kochmala’s feat.

One day he was assigned to test his skills young pilot, who had just arrived in the regiment.

“Well,” said Kochmala, “let’s fly and show off?”

They boarded a two-seater training aircraft and began performing aerobatic maneuvers over the airfield.

They rushed around so much that you'll fall in love with them. And suddenly a fascist plane emerged from behind the clouds. Huge, twin-engine, long-range reconnaissance aircraft. Having spotted something important in our rear, he quickly rushed from east to west.

You can't miss this!

But what to do? While the combat planes take off from the airfield, he will leave. There is only Kochmala in the air on an unarmed training hawk. And suddenly the commander heard his voice on the radio:

- May I catch up?

- Catch up and punish! - ordered the commander.

And they saw how the training plane chased the departing reconnaissance officer. A minute later they disappeared from view.

What will happen now? After all, Kochmala has no cannons or machine guns, he is in a training vehicle.

“Something will happen,” said one of the mechanics. - That’s why he and Kochmala...

Some tried to joke, but somehow it didn’t feel right.

And in the evening the whole airfield was excited. The young pilot has returned. Disheveled, in torn overalls and without a helmet.

- Where is Kochmala?

- I don't know. He ordered me - jump...

“I jumped and caught my parachute in the trees. I lost my helmet, high boots and got scratched, so... The partisans took me off the pine tree.

- Well, what about Kochmala?

That's all the young pilot said.

And the next morning anti-aircraft gunner officers arrived at the airfield and asked:

— Where is your pilot who jumped out with a parachute yesterday? Alive and well?

They saw the young pilot and began to congratulate him:

- You did it cleverly! Themselves with a parachute, and the plane was right under the German’s tail... Only chips flew from the Junkers, and it began to buzz into the forest. For half an hour then all smoke and flames. Don’t begrudge your plane: you shot down a long-range reconnaissance officer who took a photograph important object. You deserve a great reward.

“It wasn’t me—there was someone else,” the pilot answered embarrassedly.

The anti-aircraft gunners fell silent, realizing that they had brought news of the death of a hero to the regiment.

The regiment became sad, but not for long.

One day the pilots returned from reconnaissance and said:

- Kochmala is alive! Nothing is being done to him, he’s acting weird again. We fly and look: in the enemy’s rear, in the snow, a huge arrow made of spruce branches is laid out and points to the cemetery. We hit it - and from there the Nazis were like cockroaches. It turns out that they disguised themselves among the graves... and asked to be dead! Well, who could have set this up if not Kochmala! He does it. Not on an airplane, but on foot, he beats enemies... Somewhere in the partisans.

So a legend appeared in the regiment that Kochmala did not die.

And with each movement forward, the pilots expected that Kochmala himself would appear from the liberated territory in some passing vehicle and, having reported to the commander that he had carried out the order - he had punished the fascist intelligence officer, he would definitely say something funny.

Nikolay Bogdanov "Ivan Tigers"

The Nazis were driving towards Moscow along the highway. They didn’t even look into the village of Vereteyka. What's the use of it: it's in the forest, and there are swamps all around. But when they fled from Moscow, they fled along country roads. Our tanks and planes drove them off good roads— the Nazis had to stomp on foot through forests and swamps.

And then they came across Vereteyka.

Hearing about the approach of enemies, all the inhabitants fled into the forest and either buried all their property in the ground or took it with them.

The enemies got nothing, not a single rooster. It was as if the village had died out.

Still, two people lingered: Vanya Kurkin and his grandfather Sevastyan.

The old man went to tidy up the fishing nets, but hesitated, and the little one didn’t want to leave without his grandfather, and then he remembered that there was a pot of sour cream left in the cellar, he wanted to fly away in one breath and also didn’t have time.

He stuck his nose out of the cellar and saw that the Germans were already roaming around the houses. And the tanks are thundering down the street.

Grandfather fell towards him with an armful of nets in his hands.

- Vanyusha, hide, sit quietly, otherwise you’ll disappear! - the deaf man makes noise under the noses of the Germans.

His grandson was to blame for his deafness. When Vanya was younger, mischievous boys persuaded him to put sand in his grandfather’s gun. So, they say, it will shoot harder.

Grandfather followed the bunnies but didn’t check the gun and didn’t notice that there was sand in the barrel. He hit it sideways, fired, and the gun exploded.

Since then, the grandfather has become deaf - he screams, but it seems to him that he speaks quietly. Trouble with him!

Thousands of Germans passed by the village, but apparently they were in a hurry: they did not find the cellar. When the movement died down, Vanya cautiously looked out and was surprised.

In front of the outskirts, in the sandy mounds, the Germans managed to dig large holes. In front they were carefully disguised with bushes and fences.

In one pit they put a tank, huge, almost the size of a hut. Scary. Black spiders are drawn on the sides - a swastika.

Vanya realized that this was an ambush.

And how cunningly this tank acted! When our tanks came out onto the road, he fired at them. It shoots and immediately crawls away from one hole to another.

Our people shoot where they noticed the flash from the shot, but the tank is no longer there: it crawled into another hole.

And Vanya is scared, it takes her breath away, her heart stops when the shells explode, and curiosity is worse than fear.

“Really,” he thinks, “the Germans are more cunning than ours, huh?” And such annoyance takes over him, he clenches his teeth.

“If I had a gun, I would show you how to play hide and seek!”

Well, what a gun he has! A pot of sour cream tied in a rag - that’s all the weapon!

Yes, in the rear he has a deaf grandfather hiding under nets - his strength is also small.

And Vanya wants to help her people, but there is nothing to help her.

Suddenly the shooting stopped.

Our tanks have retreated. Probably, we went to look for a detour. Or for help. After all, it might have seemed to them that there were a lot of tanks here.

The Nazis got out of their tank - sweaty, dirty, scary.

They take out rusty tin cans. They open it with knives, eat it, and mutter something to themselves.

“Look, they’re probably swearing because they didn’t find any chicken in our village!” - Vanya thought.

He looked at the pot and grinned: “And they don’t know that there is fresh sour cream nearby...” And then such a thought flashed through his mind that even his heart went cold: “Eh, it wasn’t there... Well, I’ll try! Even though they are cunning, they are not more cunning than our grandfather!”

And he rolled out of the cellar, holding the treasured pot with both hands.

Fearlessly approached the Germans.

The fascists became wary, two jumped up and stared at him point-blank:

- Little partisan?

And Vanya smiled and, holding the pot forward, said in a friendly manner:

- And I brought you sour cream. Wow, an unfinished pot... Look!

The Germans looked at each other.

One came up. I looked into the pot. He said something to his friends. Then he took out a folding spoon, grabbed the sour cream and stuck it in Vanya’s mouth.

Vanya swallowed and shook his head:

- No, not poisoned. Sour cream is gut morgen! - And he even licked his lips.

The Germans laughed approvingly. They took the pot and began to put it into their own pots: everyone got the same amount, the boss got the most. The boy didn't lie: the sour cream was good.

And Vanya quickly got used to it.

He walked up to the tank, patted the dusty sides and praised:

- Gut your tank, gut machine... What's his name? "Tiger"?

The Germans are happy that he praises their car. They laugh.

“I, I,” they say, “Tiger Koenig...

And Vanyusha looks into the barrel of the gun. The tank is standing in a hole, and its big-headed gun is almost lying on a sandy mound. So you can stick your nose into it.

Looking sideways at the Germans who are eating sour cream, Vanya carefully takes a handful of sand and puts his hand into the very mouth of the gun. Heat is pouring out of it: it has not yet cooled down after the shots.

Vanya quickly unclenched his palm and pulled his hand away. He strokes the gun as if admiring it.

And he himself thinks: “This is tobacco in your nose, don’t stop sneezing... However, it’s not enough. After all, it’s not like grandpa’s gun—it’s a big gun.”

I walked around the tank again. Praised again:

- Gut "tiger", gut machine...

And, seeing that the Germans were carried away by sour cream and did not notice anything, he took it and added another handful of sand in the same manner.

And he had only just managed to do this when a new battle broke out. A formidable Soviet tank came onto the road. Walks straight chest forward. Not afraid of anything. He fired on the move and the first shell landed in an empty pit, from where the enemy “tiger” managed to crawl away.

The Germans rushed to their tank. We climbed into it, hid and let’s turn the gun turret and point the gun at our tank...

Vanya dived into the cellar. He looks through the crack, and his heart is beating, as if he wants to jump out.

“Will the Nazis really destroy our tank? Really, their gun doesn’t care about sand?”

The Germans settled in, took aim, and how they fired! There was such a roar and rattling sound that Vanya fell to the bottom of the cellar.

When he got back out and looked out, he looked: there was a “tiger” standing on same place, but he doesn’t have a gun. Half the trunk was torn off. Smoke is coming out of it. And the fascist tank crews opened the hatch, jumped out of it, and ran in different directions. They scream and grab their eyes with their hands.

“Like this, with sand! Like this, with sand! It cleaned you up great!”

Vanya jumped out and shouted:

- Grandfather, look what happened, the “tiger” is kaput!

Grandfather got out and couldn’t believe his eyes: the tank had a cannon with curlicues... Why did its barrel get torn apart like that?

And then a Soviet tank burst into the village like a storm. He stopped at the abandoned "tiger".

Our tankers come out and look around.

“Yeah,” says one, “here he is, the beast, ready, baked... They hit him right in the cannon.”

“It’s strange...” says another. “That’s where we shot, but we hit here!”

“Maybe you didn’t hit it,” Vanya intervened.

- How come you didn’t hit it? And who turned his gun around?

- And he was the one who got hit and crashed.

- Well, yes, the tanks themselves do not break: they are not toys.

- What if you put sand in the cannon?

- Well, the sand will blow up any gun.

- So it was torn apart.

-Where did the sand come from?

“And I sprinkled this a little,” Vanya admitted.

“He, he,” the grandfather confirmed, “is a mischief-maker!” He once poured sand into my gun too.

Our tank crews burst out laughing, picked up Vanyusha and let’s rock.

The boy had to tell everything all over again ten times to the artillerymen who arrived, the infantrymen who arrived in time, and the villagers who came running from the forest to greet their liberators.

He was so carried away that he did not notice how his mother returned from the forest. She always strictly ordered him not to go into the cellar without permission, not to dispose of the milk and not to touch the sour cream. And Vanya was telling me how he deceived the Germans with sour cream.

- Oh, you robber! - the mother exclaimed when she heard such details. - Why have you caused trouble on the farm? He used sour cream for the Germans. I broke the pot!

It’s good that the tankers stood up for him.

“Okay,” they say, “Mommy, don’t worry.” You will make sour cream again. Look what a German tank he knocked out! Heavy, cannon, tiger systems.

The mother softened, stroked her son’s head and said tenderly:

- Well, why not, he’s a well-known mischief...

A lot of time has passed since then. The war ended with our victory. Residents returned to the village. Vereteyka rebuilt itself and began to live a peaceful life. And only the German “tiger” with a torn cannon still stands at the outskirts, reminiscent of the enemy invasion.

And when passers-by or travelers ask: “Who knocked out this German tank?” - all the village children answer: “Ivan Tiggrov is from our village.”

It turns out that since then Vanya Kurkin has been nicknamed “Tigrov”, the winner of the “tigers”.

This is how a new surname appeared in the village.

Moscow, "Samovar", 2014

A wonderful audio book published in the series " School library"in the publishing house "Samovar" in 2014 "Stories about the war", compiled by Yudaeva Marina Vladimirovna, artist Podivilova Olga Vasilievna. The book for children and, mainly, about children of the war years included stories: Lev KASSIL "The Story of the Absent", Radium POGODIN "Post-War Soup" and "Horses", Anatoly MITYAEV "Four Hours' Vacation" and "Bag of Oatmeal", Valentina OSEEVA "Kocheryzhka", Konstantin SIMONOV "Baby" and "Candle", Alexey TOLSTOY "Russian Character", Mikhail SHOLOKHOV " The Fate of Man" and the early (1957) story by Vladimir BOGOMOLOV "Ivan".
You can read a summary, listen online or download audio stories about the war by Soviet writers for free and without registration.

Audiobook "War Stories" from the "School Library" series. Lev Kassil "The Story of the Absent". Summary and full audio text. Red Army soldier Nikolai Zadokhtin was awarded the order. During the awards ceremony big hall front headquarters, he addressed the audience with a request to tell about the absent hero, about a boy who was...

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Audiobook "Stories about War", the story of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov "The Fate of a Man" - the death of the Sokolov family. Meeting of the lonely Sokolov with the boy Vanya. In the hospital, Andrei Sokolov received news from a neighbor, carpenter Ivan Timofeevich, that in June 1942 the Germans bombed an aircraft factory and a heavy bomb destroyed the hut with a direct hit...

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Audiobook for schoolchildren "Stories about War", Vladimir Bogomolov, story "Ivan" - about young hero scout. Read by Nadezhda Prokma. About two hundred people are involved in the operation to drop a boy scout behind enemy lines. They are ready to cover us with a barrage of fire at any moment and have no idea about the essence of the operation. "The three of us are crossing to the other side...

Audiobook for schoolchildren "War Stories", Vladimir Bogomolov's story "Ivan", chapter 6. On a 3-4-seater "tuzik" boat, in the rain, with a headwind, Kholin, Galtsev and Ivan Buslov, who was listed in our intelligence documents under the name " Bondarev", are being transported across the Dnieper. Quietly, they make their way along the shore to the ravine and say goodbye. Vanya goes to the rear...

Audiobook for schoolchildren "Stories about War", Vladimir Bogomolov's story "Ivan", chapter 9 - about the young intelligence hero Ivan Buslov. Berlin capitulated on May 2, at three o'clock in the afternoon. In a dilapidated building on Prinz Albrechtstrasse, in the building of the state secret police, an account card with a photograph of Ivan Buslov was found. It was pinned from below...

Story 1. Vitka

Vitka is a hot and heavy boy - like his father, silent - like his mother. Lived in Moscow. The father drank shamelessly, was rowdy and lived poorly with his mother. Sometimes, when he returns from work, you can hear him half the street away from home. Not just our own, but besides Vitka there was also Galka, a younger sister and older brother Tolik, but the neighbor’s kids from the yard were also molting. Don't get caught drunken hand. The mother of the neighbors in the communal apartment was waiting for her husband to fall asleep. She endured it like a woman, as best she could. Children are common, after all. Galka fiercely hated her father for his cruelty to her and her mother - he beat both of them, the brothers perceived such a life as a normal state of affairs. Similar things were observed in neighboring families, although less frequently.
Every summer, my mother sent Vitka and Galka to the village of Verzilovo, near Kashira, to visit their grandfather and grandmother. At the beginning of July 1941, Vitka turned eleven. They knew that the war had begun, and my father had gone to the front. And at the beginning of August a funeral came for him: He died the death of the brave in an unequal battle with fascist invaders. The grandmother, having learned about the grief, sat down to lament: “My orphans! The kids are unhappy." The brother and sister returned home and found the grandmother in tears:
- Grandma, what happened?! - they shouted out loud.
- Your dad is dead! My orphans! - Grandma cried.
- God bless! – Galka exhaled.
- Stupid! - the grandmother barked and slapped her on the back of the head.
Vitka silently climbed onto the stove. Fell asleep. And in the morning I woke up with firm conviction: “We must take revenge for our father.” And he informed his sister about his decision. We agreed that he would leave the next evening, as soon as the grandparents fell asleep. In the night, unnoticed, it will reach railway station, that eleven kilometers from the village, he will board some military train, and then all that matters is getting to the front. And he will take revenge. At the same time, Vitka furiously clenched his fists.
The preparations have begun. In the afternoon I washed myself in a barrel, cut my nails, otherwise “how is it - a soldier’s dirty claws will tear his boots” - Galka suggested this. Vitka shaved his temples with his grandfather’s old penknife, this was for the sake of respectability, so that they would not be mistaken for a boy at the front. The jackdaw collected a bag: a piece of bread, a couple of boiled eggs, lard clothes, a head of sugar. And as the old men fell asleep, she put a jug of milk on the table for the future warrior. Vitka did not approve of the milk. He demanded that he be cleared. Galka waved her apron at her father, as her mother used to do, but immediately pressed it to her eyes and burst into tears, as usual. She crossed herself as best she could. We said goodbye with a kiss. You're supposed to shout, but you can't do that - your grandparents will wake up. Put the bag on your shoulders and behind the door as a shadow. The jackdaw stood there and waved her white handkerchief into the darkness...
A day later, Vitka was removed from the train. I managed to drive about thirty kilometers from the station.
At home, the grandfather walked around the soft spot with a belt and buckle, saying:
- These are for my grandmother’s tears, these are for my sciatica, these are for Galka and for her bruises on her ass, these are for the mother who received a funeral for her husband. You are her helpers and joy in life, but what are you thinking, you bastard!
- Grandfather, why does Galka have bruises on his butt? – Vitka asked through tears not of pain, but of resentment at being caught.
- So, I asked her where you ran off to! Eh, stubborn girl, what an ass!
After the first failure, Vitka ran to the front three more times with the same outcome. Until I saw the Germans in my native village.

Story 2. Germans in the village

From mid-November, nearby shell explosions could be heard. Fascist planes flew by. They hit mainly in strategic places, in Kashira.
In the twentieth of November, a rumor spread through the village: “The Germans are coming, they’re already in Venyovo.” Venyovo is a town thirty kilometers from Verzilovo, where Vitka and Galka live. My mother and older brother are in Moscow at a military factory making shells for the front. And the younger ones at least help their grandparents. There is a lot to do in the village. All summer they dug bomb shelters and trenches. They worked in the fields, collecting hay and tying it into sheaves. They dug holes in which they hid bread, flour, cereals - millet, rye - everything that they received for their workdays and grew in their gardens. And as the Germans began to approach, grandfather and other villagers drove the livestock - sheep, pigs and cows to Kashira. Only they didn’t have time to drive the horses away. Grandfather Dimitri himself “hid” a herd of 30 heads in the forest.
Once Vitka and Galka were sitting with another child on the porch of the house. Suddenly a wedge comes along. I reached the porch, a man in an unfamiliar military uniform took out a pistol. The guys, as if on command, fell to the ground and covered their heads with their hands. At the same moment, enemy planes took off. The wedge man shot into the sky. A rocket launcher was in his hands. Apparently, he made it clear to the pilot that his people were here. The planes were flying towards Kashira. The tankman left. A powerful explosion of a bomb thrown from an airplane was heard nearby:
- Wow! The bomb has dropped! – the boys shouted, “let’s run and see what kind of funnel it turns out to be!”
Then Vitkina-Galkina’s grandmother, Anna Rodionovna, came running:
- Hey, what did you think?! - and drove everyone into a bomb shelter dug behind a neighboring garden.
There were about twenty people there. While waiting out the raid, the women agreed to set up a “kindergarten.” Away from sin, so that children don’t run around on their own and jump on unexploded mines and shells. We decided to take the children to one house every morning and leave everyone there under the supervision of the village teacher.
And a few days later the Germans came to the village. We were distributed to our homes. Grandma drove Vitka and Galka onto the stove, which stood in the middle of the hut, and pulled the curtain over them. A tall man in an officer's uniform entered.
- Is Rousseau a soldier? - He asked and went to the stove and pulled back the curtain.
From there, two pairs of eyes narrowed in hatred stared at him.
- There are Russo children here! - Vitka barked.
The grandmother hastily closed the curtain and stood between the officer and the stove with a belligerent look.
- I-I! Gut! - the officer said and left.
A few minutes later German soldiers entered the house. They brought in the hay and spread it throughout the house, then they stored all their weapons at the door and... went to bed.
Grandma Anna did not sleep that night. She was afraid to breathe. And I kept looking at the soldiers - that’s what they are, Germans, like ordinary people... And then he sees Vitka’s legs hanging from the stove. The boy quietly got down, went to the door, grabbed all the weapons and left the house. Anna could barely contain herself not to scream. She sneaked between the sleeping soldiers, slipped out the door, out of the house through the gate. Vitka, bending to the ground from the weight of the weapon, quickly walked towards the forest. Grandmother ran after him. She caught up, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him:
- What are you doing?! After all, they will put everyone under a machine gun, they will not regret it, they will not look at them as “Russian children”! - she mimicked Vitka, grabbed the weapon from him and dragged him home. Vitka was ordered to stay outside.
The weapon was returned to its place. Anna woke up Galka, putting her finger to her lips and showing - be quiet, they say. They quickly got out and ran to the bomb shelter, where they sat for the next four days.
These days there were battles. Grandfather Dimitri remained in the house. German soldiers returned between actions and not all alive. The dead were brought with them, loaded into big car, the car was leaving.
One day my grandfather heard wild screams and looked out the window. A German soldier was carrying a wounded man. He had a huge wound on his head. Blood left a black stream behind the people. The soldier brought the wounded man to the “corpse wagon,” threw him inside and shot. The screams stopped.
On the fourth day after the battle, two German soldiers returned without an officer. Grandfather Dimitri watched them from the stove. They washed, sat down at the table, took out biscuits and some canned food. Then a hefty fellow, blond and red-cheeked, entered the hut. In the village they said that he was Finnish by nationality. The fascist pulled the grandfather by the collar from the oven and began to shout, showing with his hands that he needed round bread. Grandfather throws up his hands, saying, there is nothing. He pulled out a revolver and put it to his grandfather's head. At that moment a German officer entered the hut. Realizing what was going on, the officer let out a long tirade in his own language and swung at the Finn. The soldier flew out of the house like a bullet. And the grandfather climbed back onto the stove.
On the fifth day, Soviet soldiers entered the village. But for a long time, villagers watched the Katyusha salvos and heard explosions. The Germans were never seen again. But the whole war was still ahead.

Story 3. The whole war is ahead

After German part left the village, people gradually left the bomb shelters. They saw something terrible. No, the houses stood still, the villagers, even those who were not hiding, were alive, but former fields turned into one continuous pit of craters. The suffocating smell of death hung in the air. The ground was littered with shells and rotting corpses of soldiers. Soviet soldiers.
On the Bugre, actually high place villages, residents set up a mass grave. Someone said that three of “ours” tried to knock out a German machine gunner from Bugr, who had settled there the day before the capture of the village. Two soldiers were killed on the approaches by machine-gun fire. Only the third managed to get to the height from the forest, but he also died. He shot at the fascist while receiving bullets in himself. All three were buried there. The monument was built. They died defending every village, every house...
The women brought domestic animals that had survived the bombing from Kashira and restored the destroyed barns and stables. Gradually they began to return to normal life.
The surrounding area was “infected” with iron disease. There were weapons lying around everywhere, which the village boys were very interested in. Everyone wanted to know what it consisted of and how it worked. Unexploded shells and mines posed a particular danger. To prevent misfortunes, villagers sent their children and grandchildren to a “kindergarten” during work. But…
This happened in the spring, when the sun was shining, when the trees and bushes turned green, and the first grass began to emerge, hiding the bloody horror of the earth. The fields had to be leveled and plowed for sowing. The oldest children, who were already eleven to twelve years old, were taken from the “kindergarten” to do field work. Three friends - Vitka, Zhenka and Kolka were walking behind horses with a plow when a whole mine was discovered on the way. Curiosity took precedence over caution. The boys pulled the mine out of the ground and tried to dismantle it. It didn't work out. Then they dragged her into the barn while the adults weren’t looking. Zhenya, the eldest of all, suggested:
- Let’s hit it with a stone to open this lid. But here's the thing, if there's an explosion, you fall. And I’ll run to the “kindergarten” for help.
And so they did. They hit the mine with a stone. There was a deafening explosion. Vitka and Kolka fell to the ground, and Zhenya ran...
The next day Zhenya and Kolya were buried. Vitka was wounded in his hand and survived.

Olga Pirozhkova

No matter how much time has passed since the Victory Day, the events of the forties of the twentieth century are still fresh in the memory of the people, and not last role the works of writers play a role in this. What books about war for preschool children can teachers of preschool institutions be advised to read?

Of course, the most interesting for them will be those works whose heroes are their peers. What did their peers go through? How did you behave in difficult situations?

Children's literature about the Second World War can be divided into two large parts: poetry and prose. Stories about the Great Patriotic War for preschool children tell about children and teenagers who participated in the fight against the invaders, introducing modern children to the exploits of their grandparents. These works are filled with an informational component that requires enormous preliminary work by both the children and the teachers themselves. Preschoolers empathize with the characters of A. Gaidar, L. Kassil, A. Mityaev, and are worried; for the first time they realize the cruelty and mercilessness of war towards ordinary people, they are horrified by the atrocities of fascism and attacks on civilians.

Rules for reading literature about war to preschoolers:

Be sure to read the work first and, if necessary, retell it to the children, reading only a small piece of the work of art.

Carry out the required preliminary work, revealing all the necessary information points.

Pick up works of art according to the age of the children (give additional information in your own words).

Be sure to read the works several times, especially if children ask.

Start reading books on military theme you can already younger preschoolers. Of course, it will be difficult for them to understand large genre forms- stories, novels, but short stories written specifically for children are quite accessible even to children 3-5 years old. Before introducing a child to works about war, it is necessary to prepare him to perceive the topic: give a little information from history, focusing not on dates and numbers (children at this age do not yet perceive them, but on the moral aspect of war. Tell young readers about how soldiers courageously defended their homeland, how old people, women and children died, how innocent people were captured... And only when the child has formed an idea of ​​​​what “war” is, you can offer him stories about this difficult time in the history of the country:

Junior group:

Orlov Vladimir “My brother is joining the Army.”

"The Tale of the Loud Drum" Publishing House "Children's Literature", 1985

Memorizing poems about the army, courage, friendship.

Middle group:

Georgievskaya S. “Galina’s mother”

Mityaev Anatoly “Why is the Army dear”

"Taiga gift"

Reading poems: " Mother Earth» I am Abidov, “Remember forever” by M. Isakovsky

Reading poems: " Mass graves» V. Vysotsky, “Soviet warrior”,

Reading the story “Father’s Field” by V. Krupin,

Reading poems: “The war ended with victory” by T. Trutnev,

L. Kassil "Your defenders". Mityaeva A. “Grandfather’s Order”

When children get older (5-7 years old), adults constantly remind them that they are “no longer little.” The war did not give children time to grow up - they immediately became adults! Girls and boys who were left orphans were forced to survive in the most difficult conditions wartime. Works telling about the fate of children who have lost all their loved ones do not leave any reader indifferent: it is impossible to read them without tears. These books about war for children will help the younger generation learn to truly love their family and appreciate all the good things in their lives. The following literary works can be offered to preschoolers of senior preschool age:

Senior group:

Kim Selikhov, Yuri Deryugin “Parade on Red Square”, 1980

Sobolev Leonid “Battalion of Four”

Alekseev Sergey “Orlovich-Voronovich”, “Overcoat” by E. Blaginin, 1975

Reading the works of S.P. Alekseev “Brest Fortress”.

Y. Dlugolesky “What soldiers can do”

O. Vysotskaya “My brother went to the border”

Reading A. Gaidar’s story “War and Children”

U. Brazhnin “The Overcoat”

Cherkashin “Doll”

Preparatory group:

L. Kassil “Main Army”, 1987

Mityaev Anatoly “Dugout”

Lavrenev B. “Big Heart”

Zotov Boris “The Fate of Army Commander Mironov”, 1991

“Stories about War” (K. Simonov, A. Tolstoy, M. Sholokhov, L. Kassil, A. Mityaev, V. Oseeva)

L. Kassil “Monument to a Soldier”, “Your Defenders”

S. Baruzdin “Stories about war”

S. Mikhalkov “Victory Day”

S. P. Alekseev “Brest Fortress”.

Y. Taits “Cycle of stories about the war.”

retelling of L. Kassil's story “Sister”

Children will learn about how fragile the world can be and how an enemy invasion can turn a person’s whole life upside down by listening to books about the Second World War. The war does not end in one day - its echoes resound in the hearts of people for decades. It is thanks to the works of authors who were contemporaries of the terrible wartime that today’s youth can imagine the events of those years, learn about the tragic fates of people, about the courage and heroism shown by the defenders of the Fatherland. And of course best books about war instill in young readers the spirit of patriotism; give a holistic idea of ​​the Great Patriotic War; They teach you to value peace and love home, family, and loved ones. No matter how far the past is, the memory of it is important: children, having become adults, must do everything in order to tragic pages history has never repeated itself in the life of the people.

We have collected for you the most best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Stories from the first person, not made up, living memories of front-line soldiers and witnesses of the war.

A story about the war from the book of priest Alexander Dyachenko “Overcoming”

I was not always old and frail, I lived in Belarusian village, I had a family, a very good husband. But the Germans came, my husband, like other men, joined the partisans, he was their commander. We women supported our men in any way we could. The Germans became aware of this. They arrived in the village early in the morning. They kicked everyone out of their houses and drove them like cattle to the station in a neighboring town. The carriages were already waiting for us there. People were packed into the heated vehicles so that we could only stand. We drove with stops for two days, they gave us no water or food. When we were finally unloaded from the carriages, some were no longer able to move. Then the guards began throwing them to the ground and finishing them off with the butts of their carbines. And then they showed us the direction to the gate and said: “Run.” As soon as we had run half the distance, the dogs were released. The strongest reached the gate. Then the dogs were driven away, everyone who remained was lined up in a column and led through the gate, on which it was written in German: “To each his own.” Since then, boy, I can't look at tall chimneys.

She bared her arm and showed me a tattoo of a row of numbers on inside hands, closer to the elbow. I knew it was a tattoo, my dad had a tank tattooed on his chest because he is a tanker, but why put numbers on it?

I remember that she also talked about how our tankers liberated them and how lucky she was to live to see this day. She didn’t tell me anything about the camp itself and what was happening in it; she probably pitied my childish head.

I learned about Auschwitz only later. I found out and understood why my neighbor couldn’t look at the pipes of our boiler room.

During the war, my father also ended up in occupied territory. They got it from the Germans, oh, how they got it. And when ours drove a little, they, realizing that the grown-up boys were tomorrow’s soldiers, decided to shoot them. They gathered everyone and took them to the log, and then our airplane saw a crowd of people and started a line nearby. The Germans are on the ground, and the boys are scattered. My dad was lucky, he escaped with a shot in his hand, but he escaped. Not everyone was lucky then.

My father was a tank driver in Germany. Their tank brigade distinguished herself near Berlin on the Seelow Heights. I've seen photos of these guys. Young people, and all their chests are in orders, several people - . Many, like my dad, were drafted into the active army from occupied lands, and many had something to take revenge on the Germans for. That may be why they fought so desperately and bravely.

They walked across Europe, liberated concentration camp prisoners and beat the enemy, finishing them off mercilessly. “We were eager to go to Germany itself, we dreamed of how we would smear it with the caterpillar tracks of our tanks. We had a special unit, even the uniform was black. We still laughed, as if they wouldn’t confuse us with the SS men.”

Immediately after the end of the war, my father’s brigade was stationed in one of the small German towns. Or rather, in the ruins that remained of it. They somehow settled down in the basements of the buildings, but there was no room for a dining room. And the brigade commander, a young colonel, ordered the tables to be knocked down from shields and a temporary canteen to be set up right in the town square.

“And here is our first peaceful dinner. Field kitchens, cooks, everything is as usual, but the soldiers are not sitting on the ground or on a tank, but, as expected, at tables. We had just started having lunch, and suddenly German children began crawling out of all these ruins, basements, and crevices like cockroaches. Some are standing, but others can no longer stand from hunger. They stand and look at us like dogs. And I don’t know how it happened, but I took the bread with my shot hand and put it in my pocket, I looked quietly, and all our guys, without raising their eyes to each other, did the same.”

And then they fed the German children, gave away everything that could somehow be hidden from dinner, just yesterday’s children themselves, who very recently, without flinching, were raped, burned, shot by the fathers of these German children on our land they had captured.

The brigade commander, Hero of the Soviet Union, a Jew by nationality, whose parents, like all other Jews of a small Belarusian town, were buried alive by the punitive forces, had every right, both moral and military, to drive away the German “geeks” from his tank crews with volleys. They ate his soldiers, reduced their combat effectiveness, many of these children were also sick and could spread the infection among the personnel.

But the colonel, instead of shooting, ordered an increase in the food consumption rate. And German children, on the orders of the Jew, were fed along with his soldiers.

What kind of phenomenon do you think this is - the Russian Soldier? Where does this mercy come from? Why didn't they take revenge? It seems beyond anyone’s strength to find out that all your relatives were buried alive, perhaps by the fathers of these same children, to see concentration camps with many bodies of tortured people. And instead of “taking it easy” on the children and wives of the enemy, they, on the contrary, saved them, fed them, and treated them.

Several years have passed since the events described, and my dad, having graduated military school in the fifties, he again served in Germany, but as an officer. Once on the street of one city a young German called out to him. He ran up to my father, grabbed his hand and asked:

Don't you recognize me? Yes, of course, now it’s hard to recognize that hungry, ragged boy in me. But I remember you, how you fed us then among the ruins. Believe me, we will never forget this.

This is how we made friends in the West, by force of arms and the all-conquering power of Christian love.

Alive. We'll endure it. We will win.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WAR

It should be noted that not everyone was convincingly impressed by V. M. Molotov’s speech on the first day of the war, and the final phrase caused irony among some soldiers. When we, doctors, asked them how things were at the front, and we lived only for this, we often heard the answer: “We are scuttling. Victory is ours... that is, the Germans!”

I can’t say that J.V. Stalin’s speech had a positive effect on everyone, although most of them felt warm from it. But in the darkness of a long line for water in the basement of the house where the Yakovlevs lived, I once heard: “Here! They became brothers and sisters! I forgot how I went to jail for being late. The rat squeaked when the tail was pressed!” The people were silent at the same time. I have heard similar statements more than once.

Two other factors contributed to the rise of patriotism. Firstly, these are the atrocities of the fascists on our territory. Newspaper reports that in Katyn near Smolensk the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles we captured, and that it was not us during the retreat, as the Germans assured, that were perceived without malice. Anything could have happened. “We couldn’t leave them to the Germans,” some reasoned. But the population could not forgive the murder of our people.

In February 1942, my senior operating nurse A.P. Pavlova received a letter from the liberated banks of the Seliger River, which told how, after the explosion of a hand fan in the German headquarters hut, they hanged almost all the men, including Pavlova’s brother. They hung him on a birch tree near his native hut, and he hung for almost two months in front of his wife and three children. The mood of the entire hospital from this news became menacing for the Germans: both the staff and the wounded soldiers loved Pavlova... I ensured that the original letter was read in all the wards, and Pavlova’s face, yellowed from tears, was in the dressing room before everyone’s eyes...

The second thing that made everyone happy was the reconciliation with the church. Orthodox Church showed in her preparations for the war true patriotism, and it was appreciated. Government awards showered on the patriarch and clergy. These funds were used to create air squadrons and tank divisions with the names "Alexander Nevsky" and "Dmitry Donskoy". They showed a film where a priest with the chairman of the district executive committee, a partisan, destroys atrocious fascists. The film ended with the old bell ringer climbing the bell tower and ringing the alarm, crossing himself widely before doing so. It sounded directly: “Fall yourself with the sign of the cross, Russian people!” The wounded spectators and the staff had tears in their eyes when the lights came on.

On the contrary, the huge money contributed by the chairman of the collective farm, it seems, Ferapont Golovaty, caused evil smiles. “Look how I stole from the hungry collective farmers,” said the wounded peasants.

The activity of the fifth column, that is, caused enormous indignation among the population. internal enemies. I myself saw how many of them there were: German planes were even signaled from the windows with multi-colored flares. In November 1941, at the Neurosurgical Institute hospital, they signaled from the window in Morse code. The doctor on duty, Malm, a completely drunken and declassed man, said that the alarm was coming from the window of the operating room where my wife was on duty. The head of the hospital, Bondarchuk, said at the morning five-minute meeting that he vouched for Kudrina, and two days later the signalmen were taken, and Malm himself disappeared forever.

My violin teacher Yu. A. Aleksandrov, a communist, although a secretly religious, consumptive man, worked as the fire chief of the House of the Red Army on the corner of Liteiny and Kirovskaya. He was chasing the rocket launcher, obviously an employee of the House of the Red Army, but could not see him in the darkness and did not catch up, but he threw the rocket launcher at Alexandrov’s feet.

Life at the institute gradually improved. Central heating works better electric light became almost constant, water appeared in the water supply. We went to the movies. Films such as “Two Fighters”, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Girl” and others were watched with undisguised feeling.

For “Two Fighters,” the nurse was able to get tickets to the “October” cinema for a show later than we expected. Arriving at the next show, we learned that a shell hit the courtyard of this cinema, where visitors to the previous show were being released, and many were killed and wounded.

The summer of 1942 passed through the hearts of ordinary people very sadly. The encirclement and defeat of our troops near Kharkov, which greatly increased the number of our prisoners in Germany, brought great despondency to everyone. The new German offensive to the Volga, to Stalingrad, was very difficult for everyone. The mortality rate of the population, especially increased in the spring months, despite some improvement in nutrition, as a result of dystrophy, as well as the death of people from air bombs and artillery shelling, was felt by everyone.

My wife's and hers were stolen in mid-May ration cards, which made us very hungry again. And we had to prepare for winter.

We not only cultivated and planted vegetable gardens in Rybatskoe and Murzinka, but received a fair strip of land in the garden near the Winter Palace, which was given to our hospital. It was excellent land. Other Leningraders cultivated other gardens, squares, and the Field of Mars. We even planted about two dozen potato eyes with an adjacent piece of husk, as well as cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, onion seedlings, and especially a lot of turnips. They planted them wherever there was a piece of land.

The wife, fearing a lack of protein food, collected slugs from vegetables and pickled them in two large jars. However, they were not useful, and in the spring of 1943 they were thrown away.

The ensuing winter of 1942/43 was mild. Transport no longer stopped; all wooden houses on the outskirts of Leningrad, including houses in Murzinka, were demolished for fuel and stocked up for the winter. There was electric light in the rooms. Soon the scientists were given special letter rations. As a candidate of science, I was given a group B ration. It included monthly 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of cereal, 2 kg of meat, 2 kg of flour, 0.5 kg of butter and 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes. It was luxurious and it saved us.

My fainting stopped. I even easily stayed on duty all night with my wife, guarding the vegetable garden near the Winter Palace in turns, three times during the summer. However, despite the security, every single head of cabbage was stolen.

Art was of great importance. We began to read more, go to the cinema more often, watch film programs in the hospital, go to amateur concerts and artists who came to us. Once my wife and I were at a concert of D. Oistrakh and L. Oborin who came to Leningrad. When D. Oistrakh played and L. Oborin accompanied, it was a little cold in the hall. Suddenly a voice said quietly: “Air raid, air alert! Those who wish can go down to the bomb shelter!” In the crowded hall, no one moved, Oistrakh smiled gratefully and understandingly at us all with one eye and continued to play, without stumbling for a moment. Although the explosions shook my legs and I could hear their sounds and the barking of anti-aircraft guns, the music absorbed everything. Since then, these two musicians have become my biggest favorites and fighting friends without knowing each other.

By the autumn of 1942, Leningrad was greatly deserted, which also facilitated its supply. By the time the blockade began, up to 7 million cards were issued in a city overcrowded with refugees. In the spring of 1942, only 900 thousand were issued.

Many were evacuated, including part of the 2nd Medical Institute. The rest of the universities have all left. But they still believe that about two million were able to leave Leningrad along the Road of Life. So about four million died (According to official data, about 600 thousand people died in besieged Leningrad, according to others - about 1 million. - ed.) a figure significantly higher than the official one. Not all the dead ended up in the cemetery. The huge ditch between the Saratov colony and the forest leading to Koltushi and Vsevolozhskaya took in hundreds of thousands of dead people and was razed to the ground. Now there is a suburban vegetable garden there, and there are no traces left. But the rustling tops and cheerful voices of those harvesting the harvest are no less happiness for the dead than the mournful music of the Piskarevsky cemetery.

A little about children. Their fate was terrible. They gave almost nothing on children's cards. I remember two cases especially vividly.

During the harshest part of the winter of 1941/42, I walked from Bekhterevka to Pestel Street to my hospital. My swollen legs almost couldn’t walk, my head was spinning, each careful step pursued one goal: to move forward without falling. On Staronevsky I wanted to go to a bakery to buy two of our cards and warm up at least a little. The frost penetrated to the bones. I stood in line and noticed that a boy of seven or eight years old was standing near the counter. He bent down and seemed to shrink all over. Suddenly he snatched a piece of bread from the woman who had just received it, fell, huddled in a ball with his back up, like a hedgehog, and began greedily tearing the bread with his teeth. The woman who had lost her bread screamed wildly: probably a hungry family was impatiently waiting for her at home. The queue got mixed up. Many rushed to beat and trample the boy, who continued to eat, his quilted jacket and hat protecting him. "Man! If only you could help,” someone shouted to me, obviously because I was the only man at the bakery. I started shaking and felt very dizzy. “You are beasts, beasts,” I wheezed and, staggering, went out into the cold. I couldn't save the child. A slight push would have been enough, and the angry people would certainly have mistaken me for an accomplice, and I would have fallen.

Yes, I'm a layman. I didn't rush to save this boy. “Don’t turn into a werewolf, a beast,” our beloved Olga Berggolts wrote these days. Wonderful woman! She helped many to endure the blockade and preserved the necessary humanity in us.

On their behalf I will send a telegram abroad:

“Alive. We'll endure it. We will win."

But my unwillingness to share the fate of a beaten child forever remained a notch on my conscience...

The second incident happened later. We had just received, but for the second time, a standard ration and my wife and I carried it along Liteiny, heading home. The snowdrifts were quite high in the second winter of the blockade. Almost opposite the house of N.A. Nekrasov, from where he admired the front entrance, clinging to the lattice immersed in the snow, a child of four or five years old was walking. He could hardly move his legs, huge eyes on the withered old face they peered with horror at the world. His legs were tangled. Tamara pulled out a large, double piece of sugar and handed it to him. At first he didn’t understand and shrank all over, and then suddenly grabbed this sugar with a jerk, pressed it to his chest and froze with fear that everything that had happened was either a dream or not true... We moved on. Well, what more could the barely wandering ordinary people do?

BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

All Leningraders talked every day about breaking the blockade, about the upcoming victory, peaceful life and the restoration of the country, the second front, that is, the active inclusion of allies in the war. However, there was little hope for allies. “The plan has already been drawn up, but there are no Roosevelts,” the Leningraders joked. They also remembered the Indian wisdom: “I have three friends: the first is my friend, the second is the friend of my friend and the third is the enemy of my enemy.” Everyone believed that the third degree of friendship was the only thing that united us with our allies. (This is how it turned out, by the way: the second front appeared only when it became clear that we could liberate all of Europe alone.)

Rarely did anyone talk about other outcomes. There were people who believed that Leningrad should become a free city after the war. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering “Window to Europe”, and “The Bronze Horseman”, and the historical significance for Russia of access to the Baltic Sea. But they talked about breaking the blockade every day and everywhere: at work, on duty on the roofs, when they were “fighting off airplanes with shovels,” extinguishing lighters, while eating meager food, going to bed in a cold bed, and during unwise self-care in those days. We waited and hoped. Long and hard. They talked about Fedyuninsky and his mustache, then about Kulik, then about Meretskov.

The draft commissions took almost everyone to the front. I was sent there from the hospital. I remember that I gave liberation to only the two-armed man, being surprised at the wonderful prosthetics that hid his handicap. “Don’t be afraid, take those with stomach ulcers or tuberculosis. After all, they will all have to be at the front for no more than a week. If they don’t kill them, they will wound them, and they will end up in the hospital,” the military commissar of the Dzerzhinsky district told us.

And indeed, the war involved a lot of blood. When trying to get in touch with the mainland, piles of bodies were left under Krasny Bor, especially along the embankments. “Nevsky Piglet” and Sinyavinsky swamps never left the lips. Leningraders fought furiously. Everyone knew that behind his back his own family was dying of hunger. But all attempts to break the blockade did not lead to success; only our hospitals were filled with the crippled and dying.

With horror we learned about the death of an entire army and Vlasov’s betrayal. I had to believe this. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals Western Front, no one believed that they were traitors and “enemies of the people,” as we were convinced of this. They remembered that the same was said about Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, even about Blucher.

The summer campaign of 1942 began, as I wrote, extremely unsuccessfully and depressingly, but already in the fall they began to talk a lot about our tenacity at Stalingrad. The fighting dragged on, winter was approaching, and in it we relied on our Russian strength and Russian endurance. The good news about the counteroffensive at Stalingrad, the encirclement of Paulus with his 6th Army, and Manstein’s failures in trying to break through this encirclement gave the Leningraders new hope on New Year’s Eve 1943.

I met New Year My wife and I together, having returned around 11 o’clock to the closet where we lived at the hospital, from a round of evacuation hospitals. There was a glass of diluted alcohol, two slices of lard, a 200 gram piece of bread and hot tea with a lump of sugar! A whole feast!

Events were not long in coming. Almost all of the wounded were discharged: some were commissioned, some were sent to convalescent battalions, some were taken to the mainland. But we didn’t wander around the empty hospital for long after the bustle of unloading it. Fresh wounded came in a stream straight from the positions, dirty, often bandaged in individual bags over their overcoats, and bleeding. We were a medical battalion, a field hospital, and a front-line hospital. Some went to the triage, others went to the operating tables for continuous operation. There was no time to eat, and there was no time to eat.

This was not the first time such streams came to us, but this one was too painful and tiring. All the time, a difficult combination of physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the precision of the dry work of a surgeon was required.

On the third day, the men could no longer stand it. They were given 100 grams of diluted alcohol and sent to sleep for three hours, although the emergency room was filled with wounded people in need of urgent operations. Otherwise, they began to operate poorly, half asleep. Well done women! Not only did they endure the hardships of the siege many times better than men, they died much less often from dystrophy, but they also worked without complaining of fatigue and accurately fulfilled their duties.

In our operating room, operations were performed on three tables: at each table there was a doctor and a nurse, and on all three tables there was another nurse, replacing the operating room. Staff operating room and dressing nurses, every one of them, assisted in the operations. The habit of working many nights in a row in Bekhterevka, the hospital named after. On October 25, she helped me out in the ambulance. I passed this test, I can proudly say, as a woman.

On the night of January 18, they brought us a wounded woman. On this day, her husband was killed, and she was seriously wounded in the brain, in the left temporal lobe. A fragment with fragments of bones penetrated into the depths, completely paralyzing both of her right limbs and depriving her of the ability to speak, but while maintaining the understanding of someone else's speech. Women fighters came to us, but not often. I took her to my table, laid her on her right, paralyzed side, numbed her skin and very successfully removed the metal fragment and bone fragments embedded in the brain. “My dear,” I said, finishing the operation and preparing for the next one, “everything will be fine. I took out the fragment, and your speech will return, and the paralysis will completely disappear. You will make a full recovery!”

Suddenly my wounded one with her free hand lying on top began to beckon me to her. I knew that she would not start talking any time soon, and I thought that she would whisper something to me, although it seemed incredible. And suddenly the wounded woman, with her healthy naked but strong hand of a fighter, grabbed my neck, pressed my face to her lips and kissed me deeply. I couldn't stand it. I didn’t sleep for four days, barely ate, and only occasionally, holding a cigarette with a forceps, smoked. Everything went hazy in my head, and, like a man possessed, I ran out into the corridor to come to my senses at least for one minute. After all, there is a terrible injustice in the fact that women, who continue the family line and soften the morals of humanity, are also killed. And at that moment our loudspeaker spoke, announcing the breaking of the blockade and the connection of the Leningrad Front with the Volkhov Front.

Was deep night, but what started here! I stood bleeding after the operation, completely stunned by what I had experienced and heard, and nurses, nurses, soldiers were running towards me... Some with their arm on an “airplane”, that is, on a splint that abducts the bent arm, some on crutches, some still bleeding through a recently applied bandage . And then the endless kisses began. Everyone kissed me, despite my frightening appearance from the spilled blood. And I stood there, missing 15 minutes of precious time for operating on other wounded in need, enduring these countless hugs and kisses.

A story about the Great Patriotic War by a front-line soldier

1 year ago on this day, a war began that divided the history of not only our country, but the whole world into before And after. The story is told by Mark Pavlovich Ivanikhin, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Chairman of the Council of Veterans of War, Labor, Armed Forces and law enforcement Eastern administrative district.

– – this is the day when our lives were broken in half. It was good bright sunday, and suddenly they announced war, the first bombings. Everyone understood that they would have to endure a lot, 280 divisions went to our country. I have a military family, my father was a lieutenant colonel. A car immediately came for him, he took his “alarm” suitcase (this is a suitcase in which the most necessary things were always ready), and we went to the school together, me as a cadet, and my father as a teacher.

Immediately everything changed, it became clear to everyone that this war would last for a long time. Alarming news plunged us into another life; they said that the Germans were constantly moving forward. This day was clear and sunny, and in the evening mobilization had already begun.

These are my memories as an 18-year-old boy. My father was 43 years old, he worked as a senior teacher at the first Moscow Artillery School named after Krasin, where I also studied. This was the first school that graduated officers who fought on Katyushas into the war. I fought on Katyushas throughout the war.

“Young, inexperienced guys walked under bullets. Was it certain death?

– We still knew how to do a lot. Back in school, we all had to pass the standard for the GTO badge (ready for work and defense). They trained almost like in the army: they had to run, crawl, swim, and also learned how to bandage wounds, apply splints for fractures, and so on. At least we were a little ready to defend our Motherland.

I fought at the front from October 6, 1941 to April 1945. I took part in the battles for Stalingrad, and from Kursk Arc through Ukraine and Poland reached Berlin.

War is a terrible experience. It is a constant death that is near you and threatens you. Shells are exploding at your feet, enemy tanks are coming at you, flocks of German planes are aiming at you from above, artillery is firing. It seems like the earth turns into a small place where you have nowhere to go.

I was a commander, I had 60 people subordinate to me. We must answer for all these people. And, despite the planes and tanks that are looking for your death, you need to control yourself and the soldiers, sergeants and officers. This is difficult to accomplish.

I can’t forget the Majdanek concentration camp. We liberated this death camp and saw emaciated people: skin and bones. And I especially remember the children with their hands cut open; their blood was taken all the time. We saw bags of human scalps. We saw torture and experiment chambers. To be honest, this caused hatred towards the enemy.

I also remember that we entered a recaptured village, saw a church, and the Germans had set up a stable in it. I had soldiers from all the cities of the Soviet Union, even from Siberia; many had fathers who died in the war. And these guys said: “We’ll get to Germany, we’ll kill the Kraut families, and we’ll burn their houses.” And so we entered the first German city, the soldiers burst into the house German pilot, saw Frau and four small children. Do you think someone touched them? None of the soldiers did anything bad to them. Russian people are quick-witted.

All German cities, which we passed through, remained intact, with the exception of Berlin, where there was strong resistance.

I have four orders. Order of Alexander Nevsky, which he received for Berlin; Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, two Orders of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree. Also a medal for military merits, medal for the victory over Germany, for the defense of Moscow, for the defense of Stalingrad, for the liberation of Warsaw and for the capture of Berlin. These are the main medals, and there are about fifty of them in total. All of us who survived the war years want one thing - peace. And so that the people who won are valuable.

Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk