In the famous book by Svetlana Alexievich “War has no woman's face“There is a very important and deep thought: “If you do not forget the war, a lot of hatred appears. And if a war is forgotten, a new one begins.” This year our country will celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. This tragedy claimed millions of human lives, destroyed cities and entire countries, and broke countless destinies. This is the price that humanity had to pay to get rid of the horrors of fascism. Soviet soldiers defended peace and won freedom for their country, for you and me. This should never be forgotten, no matter how much time passes.
For preschoolers and primary schoolchildren, they will certainly be interesting and memorable. poems about war:
- Barto A. In the days of war
- Berestov V. Man
- Karprov I. Boys
- Mikhalkov S. Children's shoe, Ten-year-old man
- Marshak S. “Not” and “neither” and many others
List of books about war for preschool and primary school age
- Voronkova L. Girl from the city (The story of an orphan girl who found herself in a foreign village during the war and found new family and house.)
- Kassil L. Street youngest son(A story dedicated to the tragic fate of Volodya Dubinin, a young partisan - hero of the Great Patriotic War.)
- Kataev V. Son of the Regiment (The story of the orphan boy Vanya Solntsev, who ended up in a military unit with intelligence officers and became the son of the regiment.)
- Oseeva V. A. Vasek Trubachev and his comrades (A work about the fate of the boy Vasya Trubachev and his friends, whose peaceful childhood was cut short by the war.)
- Simonov K. The artilleryman's son (The ballad about Major Deev and Lenka, the son of his friend, based on real events.)
- Yakovlev Yu. Girls with Vasilyevsky Island(A poignant story about the girl Tanya Savicheva, who died along with her entire family from hunger in besieged Leningrad, written based on her diary.)
- Alekseev S. Stories about the Great Patriotic War
- Artyukhova N. Svetlana
- Baruzdin S. A soldier walked down the street
- Voronkova L. Girl from the city
- Gaidar A. Timur's Oath, The Tale of the Military Secret, about Malchish-Kibalchish and his firm word
- Golyavkin V. Drawing on asphalt
- Dragunsky V. Arbuzny Lane
- Kassil L. My dear boys, Flammable cargo, Your defenders
- Markusha A. I am a soldier, and you are a soldier
- Paustovsky K. The adventures of the rhinoceros beetle
- Sokolovsky A. Valery Volkov
- Suvorina E. Vitya Korobkov
- Turichin I. Extreme case
- Yakovlev Yu. How Seryozha went to war
Middle schoolchildren will enjoy learning about children, their peers, during the Great Patriotic War, their lives, deeds and exploits.
List of books about war for students in grades 5-7
- Bogomolov V. Ivan (Tragic and true story about a brave boy scout.)
- Kozlov V. Vitka from Chapaevskaya Street (The book tells about the fate of teenagers during the war.)
- Korolkov Yu. Pioneers-heroes. Lenya Golikov (A story about a young pioneer from the Novgorod region Lena Golikov, his fate and feat, based on real events.)
- Rudny V. Children of Captain Granin (The Tale of Young Defenders Gulf of Finland, who were able not only not to miss the enemy, but also took the fire upon themselves at the most decisive moment.)
- Sobolev A. Quiet Fast (The story of the courage and heroism of yesterday's schoolchildren during the Great Patriotic War.)
- Alekseev S. Stories about war
- Balter B. Goodbye, boys!
- Bogomolov V. Zosya
- Ilyina E. Fourth height
- Likhanov A. Last cold weather
- Mityaev A. Letter from the front
List of books about war for students in grades 8-9
- Adamovich A., Granin D. Blockade book(Documentary chronicle, which is based on the testimonies of Leningrad residents who survived the siege.)
- Aitmatov Ch. Early Cranes (A story about the destinies of teenagers during the Great Patriotic War, their lives in a distant Kyrgyz village, the trials and joys that befell them.)
- Baklanov G. Forever - nineteen years old (The story of the young lieutenants of the Great Patriotic War, their tragically short front-line journey.)
- Vasiliev B. And the dawns here are quiet... (A story about the tragic destinies of five girls and their commander, performing a feat during the war.)
- Polevoy B. The Tale of a Real Man (The Tale of the Soviet pilot Meresyev, who was shot down in battle and received seriously injured, but again, in spite of everything, returned to combat formation.)
- Tvardovsky A. Vasily Terkin (A deeply truthful and humorous poem in which the immortal image of a Soviet soldier is created.)
- Sholokhov M. The Fate of a Man (The Story of a Tragic Fate common man, warped by war, and strength of character, courage and compassion.)
Students high school are already quite ready to learn about the most tragic pages Great Patriotic War. Reading such books can be combined with watching war films, both Soviet and modern.
List of books about war for students in grades 10-11
- Adamovich A. Punishers (The story of the events associated with the destruction of seven peaceful villages in occupied Belarus by the battalion of Hitler’s punisher Dirlewanger.)
- Bogomolov V. Moment of truth: In August forty-four (A fascinating novel about the work of counterintelligence officers during the Great Patriotic War, based on real events.)
- Vorobyov K. Killed near Moscow (The story, which became the first of the “lieutenant’s prose” genre, tells about the brutal battles near Moscow in the winter of 1941 and the fate of their participants.)
- Nekrasov V. In the trenches of Stalingrad (The story tells about heroic defense Stalingrad in 1942-1943.)
- Fadeev A. Young Guard (Novel about the Krasnodon underground organization "Young Guard", which operated in the territory occupied by the fascists, many of whose members died heroically in fascist dungeons.)
- Sholokhov M. They Fought for the Motherland (A novel about one of the most tragic moments of the war - the retreat of our troops to the Don in the summer of 1942.)
L. Cassil. At the chalkboard
They said about teacher Ksenia Andreevna Kartashova that her hands sing. Her movements were soft, leisurely, round, and when she explained the lesson in class, the children followed every wave of the teacher’s hand, and the hand sang, the hand explained everything that remained incomprehensible in the words. Ksenia Andreevna did not have to raise her voice at the students, she did not have to shout. If they make noise in the class, she will raise her light hand, leads her - and the whole class seems to listen, and immediately becomes quiet.
- Wow, she’s strict with us! - the guys boasted. - He notices everything right away...
Ksenia Andreevna taught in the village for thirty-two years. The village policemen saluted her on the street and, saluting her, said:
- Ksenia Andreevna, how is my Vanka doing in your science? You have him there stronger.
“Nothing, nothing, he’s moving a little,” the teacher answered, “he’s a good boy.” He's just lazy sometimes. Well, this happened to my father too. Isn't that right?
The policeman embarrassedly straightened his belt: once he himself sat at a desk and answered Ksenia Andreevna’s board at the blackboard and also heard to himself that he was a good guy, but he was just lazy sometimes... And the chairman of the collective farm was once Ksenia Andreevna’s student, and the director studied at the machine and tractor station with her. Over the course of thirty-two years, many people have passed through Ksenia Andreevna’s class. She was known as a strict but fair person.
Ksenia Andreevna’s hair had long since turned white, but her eyes had not faded and were as blue and clear as in her youth. And everyone who met this even and bright gaze involuntarily became cheerful and began to think that, honestly, he was not such a bad person and it was certainly worth living in the world. These are the eyes Ksenia Andreevna had!
And her gait was also light and melodious. Girls from high school tried to adopt her. No one had ever seen the teacher hurry up or hurry. And at the same time, all work progressed quickly and also seemed to sing in her skillful hands. When she wrote the terms of the problem or examples from grammar on the blackboard, the chalk did not knock, did not creak, did not crumble, and it seemed to the children that a white stream was easily and deliciously squeezed out of the chalk, like from a tube, writing letters and numbers on the black surface of the board. "Do not rush! Don’t rush, think carefully first!” - Ksenia Andreevna said softly when the student began to get lost in a problem or in a sentence and, diligently writing and erasing what he had written with a rag, floated in clouds of chalk smoke.
Ksenia Andreevna was in no hurry this time either. As soon as the sound of engines was heard, the teacher sternly looked at the sky and in a familiar voice told the children that everyone should go to the trench dug in the school yard. The school stood a little away from the village, on a hill. The classroom windows faced the cliff above the river. Ksenia Andreevna lived at the school. There were no classes. The front passed very close to the village. Somewhere nearby battles rumbled. Units of the Red Army retreated across the river and fortified there. And the collective farmers gathered a partisan detachment and went to the nearby forest outside the village. Schoolchildren brought them food there and told them where and when the Germans were spotted. Kostya Rozhkov, the school’s best swimmer, more than once delivered reports from the commander of the forest partisans to the Red Army soldiers on the other side. Shura Kapustina once bandaged the wounds of two partisans injured in battle herself - Ksenia Andreevna taught her this art. Even Senya Pichugin, a well-known quiet man, once spotted a German patrol outside the village and, having scouted out where he was going, managed to warn the detachment.
In the evening, the children gathered at the school and told the teacher everything. It was the same this time, when the engines began to roar very close. Fascist planes had already flown into the village more than once, dropped bombs, and scoured the forest in search of partisans. Kostya Rozhkov once even had to lie in a swamp for an entire hour, hiding his head under wide leaves of water lilies. And very close by, cut off by machine-gun fire from the plane, a reed fell into the water... And the guys were already accustomed to raids.
But now they were wrong. It wasn't the planes that were rumbling. The boys had not yet managed to hide in the gap when three dusty Germans ran into the school yard, jumping over a low palisade. Automotive sunglasses with casement lenses gleamed on their helmets. These were motorcycle scouts. They left their cars in the bushes. From three different sides, but all at once, they rushed towards the schoolchildren and aimed their machine guns at them.
- Stop! - shouted a thin, long-armed German with a short red mustache, who must have been the boss. — Pioniren? - he asked.
The guys were silent, involuntarily moving away from the barrel of the pistol, which the German took turns thrusting into their faces.
But the hard, cold barrels of the other two machine guns pressed painfully into the backs and necks of the schoolchildren.
- Schneller, schneller, bistro! - the fascist shouted.
Ksenia Andreevna stepped forward straight towards the German and covered the guys with herself.
- What would you like? — the teacher asked and looked sternly into the German’s eyes. Her blue and calm gaze confused the involuntarily retreating fascist.
- Who is V? Answer this very minute... I speak some Russian.
“I understand German,” the teacher answered quietly, “but I have nothing to talk to you about.” These are my students, I am the teacher local school. You can put your gun down. What do you want? Why are you scaring children?
- Don't teach me! - the scout hissed.
The two other Germans looked around anxiously. One of them said something to the boss. He became worried, looked towards the village and began to push the teacher and the children towards the school with the barrel of a pistol.
“Well, well, hurry up,” he said, “we’re in a hurry...” He threatened with a pistol. - Two small questions - and everything will be fine.
The guys, along with Ksenia Andreevna, were pushed into the classroom. One of the fascists remained to guard the school porch. Another German and the boss herded the guys to their desks.
“Now I’ll give you a short exam,” said the boss. - Sit down!
But the kids stood huddled in the aisle and looked, pale, at the teacher.
“Sit down, guys,” Ksenia Andreevna said in her quiet and ordinary voice, as if another lesson was beginning.
The guys carefully sat down. They sat in silence, not taking their eyes off the teacher. Out of habit, they sat down in their seats, as they usually sat in class: Senya Pichugin and Shura Kapustina in front, and Kostya Rozhkov behind everyone else, on the last desk. And, finding themselves in their familiar places, the guys gradually calmed down.
Outside the classroom windows, on the glass of which protective strips were glued, the sky was calmly blue, and on the windowsill there were flowers grown by the children in jars and boxes. As always, a hawk filled with sawdust hovered on the glass cabinet. And the wall of the classroom was decorated with carefully pasted herbariums. The older German touched one of the pasted sheets with his shoulder, and dried daisies, fragile stems and twigs fell onto the floor with a slight crunch.
This cut the boys painfully to the heart. Everything was wild, everything seemed contrary to the usual established order within these walls. And the familiar classroom seemed so dear to the children, the desks on the lids of which the dried ink smudges shone like the wing of a bronze beetle.
And when one of the fascists approached the table where Ksenia Andreevna usually sat and kicked him, the guys felt deeply insulted.
The boss demanded that he be given a chair. None of the guys moved.
- Well! - the fascist shouted.
“They only listen to me here,” said Ksenia Andreevna. - Pichugin, please bring a chair from the corridor.
Quiet Senya Pichugin silently slipped from his desk and went to get a chair. He didn't return for a long time.
- Pichugin, hurry up! - the teacher called Senya.
He appeared a minute later, dragging a heavy chair with a seat upholstered in black oilcloth. Without waiting for him to come closer, the German snatched the chair from him, placed it in front of him and sat down. Shura Kapustina raised her hand:
- Ksenia Andreevna... can I leave the class?
- Sit, Kapustina, sit. “And, looking at the girl knowingly, Ksenia Andreevna added barely audibly: “There’s still a sentry there.”
- Now everyone will listen to me! - said the boss.
And, distorting his words, the fascist began to tell the guys that the Red partisans were hiding in the forest, and he knew it very well, and the guys knew it too. German intelligence officers more than once saw schoolchildren running back and forth into the forest. And now the guys must tell the boss where the partisans are hiding. If the guys tell you where the partisans are now, naturally, everything will be fine. If the guys don’t say it, naturally, everything will be very bad.
“Now I will listen to everyone,” the German finished his speech.
Then the guys understood what they wanted from them. They sat motionless, only managed to glance at each other and froze again on their desks.
A tear slowly crawled down Shura Kapustina’s face. Kostya Rozhkov sat leaning forward, placing his strong elbows on the tilted lid of his desk. The short fingers of his hands were intertwined. Kostya swayed slightly, staring at his desk. From the outside it seemed that he was trying to unclasp his hands, but some force was preventing him from doing this.
The guys sat in silence.
The boss called his assistant and took the card from him.
“Tell them,” he said in German to Ksenia Andreevna, “to show me this place on a map or plan.” Well, it's alive! Just look at me... - He spoke again in Russian: - I warn you that I understand the Russian language and what you will say to the children...
He went to the board, took a chalk and quickly sketched out a plan of the area - a river, a village, a school, a forest... To make it clearer, he even drew a chimney on the school roof and scribbled curls of smoke.
“Maybe you’ll think about it and tell me everything you need?” — the boss quietly asked the teacher in German, coming close to her. — Children won’t understand, speak German.
“I already told you that I’ve never been there and don’t know where it is.”
The fascist, grabbing Ksenia Andreevna by the shoulders with his long hands, roughly shook her:
Ksenia Andreevna freed herself, took a step forward, walked up to the desks, leaned both hands on the front and said:
- Guys! This man wants us to tell him where our partisans are. I don't know where they are. I have never been there. And you don't know either. Is it true?
“We don’t know, we don’t know!..” the guys made a noise. - Who knows where they are! They went into the forest and that was it.
“You are really bad students,” the German tried to joke, “you can’t answer such a simple question.” Ay, ay...
He looked around the class with feigned cheerfulness, but did not meet a single smile. The guys sat stern and wary. It was quiet in
class, only Senya Pichugin snored gloomily on the first desk.
The German approached him:
- Well, what’s your name?.. You don’t know either?
“I don’t know,” Senya answered quietly.
- What is this, do you know? “The German pointed the muzzle of his pistol at Senya’s drooping chin.
“I know that,” said Senya. — Automatic pistol of the “Walter” system...
- Do you know how many times he can kill such bad students?
- Don't know. Consider for yourself...” Senya muttered.
- Who is this! - the German shouted. - You said: do the math yourself! Very well! I'll count to three myself. And if no one tells me what I asked, I will shoot your stubborn teacher first. And then - anyone who doesn’t say. I started counting! Once!..
He grabbed Ksenia Andreevna’s hand and pulled her towards the wall of the classroom. Ksenia Andreevna did not utter a sound, but it seemed to the children that her soft, melodious hands themselves began to groan. And the class buzzed. Another fascist immediately pointed his pistol at the guys.
“Children, don’t,” Ksenia Andreevna said quietly and wanted to raise her hand out of habit, but the fascist hit her hand with the barrel of the pistol, and her hand fell powerlessly.
“Alzo, so none of you know where the partisans are,” said the German. - Great, we'll count. I already said “one”, now there will be “two”.
The fascist began to raise his pistol, aiming at the teacher’s head. At the front desk, Shura Kapustina began to sob.
“Be quiet, Shura, be quiet,” whispered Ksenia Andreevna, and her lips hardly moved. “Let everyone be silent,” she said slowly, looking around the class, “if anyone is scared, let them turn away.” No need to look, guys. Farewell! Study hard. And remember this lesson of ours...
- I’ll say “three” now! - the fascist interrupted her.
And suddenly Kostya Rozhkov stood up in the back row and raised his hand:
“She really doesn’t know!”
- Who knows?
“I know...” Kostya said loudly and clearly. “I went there myself and I know.” But she wasn’t and doesn’t know.
“Well, show me,” said the boss.
- Rozhkov, why are you telling lies? - said Ksenia Andreevna.
“I’m telling the truth,” Kostya said stubbornly and harshly and looked into the teacher’s eyes.
“Kostya...” began Ksenia Andreevna.
But Rozhkov interrupted her:
- Ksenia Andreevna, I know it myself...
The teacher stood with her back turned away from him.
dropping his white head onto his chest. Kostya went to the board where he had answered the lesson so many times. He took the chalk. He stood indecisively, fingering the white crumbling pieces. The fascist approached the board and waited. Kostya raised his hand with a chalk.
“Look here,” he whispered, “I’ll show you.”
The German approached him and bent down to better see what the boy was showing. And suddenly Kostya hit the black surface of the board with both hands with all his might. This is done when, having written on one side, the board is about to be turned over to the other. The board turned sharply in its frame, squealed and hit the fascist in the face with a flourish. He flew to the side, and Kostya, jumping over the frame, instantly disappeared behind the board, as if behind a shield. The fascist, clutching his bloody face, fired uselessly at the board, putting bullet after bullet into it.
In vain... Behind the blackboard there was a window overlooking the cliff above the river. Kostya, without thinking, jumped through the open window, threw himself off the cliff into the river and swam to the other bank.
The second fascist, pushing Ksenia Andreevna away, ran to the window and began shooting at the boy with a pistol. The boss pushed him aside, snatched the pistol from him and took aim through the window. The guys jumped up to their desks. They no longer thought about the danger that threatened them. Now only Kostya worried them. They wanted only one thing now - for Kostya to get to the other side, so that the Germans would miss.
At this time, hearing gunfire in the village, the partisans who were tracking down the motorcyclists jumped out of the forest. Seeing them, the German guarding the porch fired into the air, shouted something to his comrades and rushed into the bushes where the motorcycles were hidden. But a machine-gun burst lashed through the bushes, cutting through leaves and cutting off branches.
the Red Army patrol that was on the other side...
No more than fifteen minutes passed, and the partisans brought three disarmed Germans into the classroom, where the excited children burst into again. The commander of the partisan detachment took a heavy chair, pushed it towards the table and wanted to sit down, but Senya Pichugin suddenly rushed forward and snatched the chair from him.
- No, no, no! I'll bring you another one now.
And he instantly dragged another chair from the corridor, and pushed this one behind the board. The commander of the partisan detachment sat down and called the chief of the fascists to the table for interrogation. And the other two, rumpled and quiet, sat next to each other on the desk of Senya Pichugin and Shura Kapustina, carefully and timidly placing their legs there.
“He almost killed Ksenia Andreevna,” Shura Kapustina whispered to the commander, pointing to the fascist intelligence officer.
“That’s not exactly true,” the German muttered, “that’s not right at all...
- He, he! - shouted the quiet Senya Pichugin. - He still has a mark... I... when I was dragging the chair, I accidentally spilled ink on the oilcloth.
The commander leaned over the table, looked and grinned: there was a dark ink stain on the back of the fascist’s gray pants...
Ksenia Andreevna entered the class. She went ashore to find out if Kostya Rozhkov swam safely. The Germans sitting at the front desk looked in surprise at the commander who had jumped up.
- Get up! - the commander shouted at them. — In our class you are supposed to stand up when the teacher enters. Apparently that’s not what you were taught!
And the two fascists obediently stood up.
- May I continue our lesson, Ksenia Andreevna? - asked the commander.
- Sit, sit, Shirokov.
“No, Ksenia Andreevna, take your rightful place,” Shirokov objected, pulling up a chair, “in this room you are our mistress.” And here, at that desk over there, I’ve gained my wits, and my daughter is here with you... Sorry, Ksenia Andreevna, that we had to allow these cheeky people into our class. Well, since this has happened, you should ask them properly yourself. Help us: you know their language...
And Ksenia Andreevna took her place at the table, from which she had learned a lot in thirty-two years good people. And now in front of Ksenia Andreevna’s desk, next to the chalkboard, pierced by bullets, a long-armed, red-mustachioed brute was hesitating, nervously straightening his jacket, humming something and hiding his eyes from the blue, stern gaze of the old teacher.
“Stand properly,” said Ksenia Andreevna, “why are you fidgeting?” My guys don't behave like that. That's it... Now take the trouble to answer my questions.
And the lanky fascist, timid, stretched out in front of the teacher.
Arkady Gaidar "Hike"
Little story
At night, the Red Army soldier brought a summons. And at dawn, when Alka was still sleeping, his father kissed him deeply and went off to war - on a campaign.
In the morning, Alka was angry why they didn’t wake him up, and immediately declared that he wanted to go hiking too. He probably would have screamed and cried. But quite unexpectedly, his mother allowed him to go on a hike. And so, in order to gain strength before the road, Alka ate a full plate of porridge without whim, and drank milk. And then he and his mother sat down to cook hiking equipment. His mother sewed his pants, and he, sitting on the floor, whittled a saber out of a board. And right there, while they were working, they learned marching marches, because with a song like “A Christmas Tree Was Born in the Forest,” you can’t go far. And the motive is not the same, and the words are not the same, in general, this melody is completely unsuitable for battle.
But then the time came for the mother to go on duty at work, and they postponed their work until tomorrow.
And so, day after day, they prepared Alka for the long journey. They sewed pants, shirts, banners, flags, knitted warm stockings and mittens. There were already seven wooden sabers hanging on the wall next to the gun and the drum. But this reserve is not a problem, because in a hot battle the life of a ringing saber is even shorter than that of a horseman.
And long ago, perhaps, Alka could have gone on a hike, but then a fierce winter came. And with such frost, of course, it won’t take long to catch a runny nose or a cold, and Alka waited patiently warm sun. But then the sun returned. The melted snow turned black. And just to start getting ready, the bell rang. And the father, who had returned from the hike, entered the room with heavy steps. His face was dark, weather-beaten, and his lips were chapped, but his gray eyes looked cheerful.
He, of course, hugged his mother. And she congratulated him on his victory. He, of course, kissed his son deeply. Then he examined all of Alkino’s camping equipment. And, smiling, he ordered his son: keep all these weapons and ammunition in in perfect order, because there will still be many difficult battles and dangerous campaigns ahead on this earth.
Konstantin Paustovsky. Bummer
I had to walk all day along overgrown meadow roads.
Only in the evening did I go to the river, to the watchhouse of the beacon keeper Semyon.
The guardhouse was on the other side. I shouted to Semyon to hand me the boat, and while Semyon was untying it, rattling the chain and going for the oars, three boys approached the shore. Their hair, eyelashes and panties were faded to a straw color.
The boys sat down by the water, above the cliff. Immediately, swifts began to fly out from under the cliff with a whistle that sounded like shells from a small cannon; Many swift nests were dug in the cliff. The boys laughed.
- Where are you from? - I asked them.
“From Laskovsky Forest,” they answered and said that they were pioneers from a neighboring town, they came to the forest to work, they had been sawing wood for three weeks now, and sometimes they came to the river to swim. Semyon transports them to the other side, to the sand.
“He’s just grumpy,” said the smallest boy. “Everything is not enough for him, everything is not enough.” Do you know him?
- I know. For a long time.
- He is good?
- Very good.
“But everything is not enough for him,” the thin boy in the cap sadly confirmed. “You can’t please him with anything.” Swears.
I wanted to ask the boys what, after all, was not enough for Semyon, but at that time he himself drove up on a boat, got out, extended his rough hand to me and the boys and said:
“They’re good guys, but they understand little.” You could say they don't understand anything. So it turns out that we, the old brooms, are supposed to teach them. Am I right? Get on the boat. Go.
“Well, you see,” said the little boy, climbing into the boat. - I told you so!
Semyon rowed rarely, slowly, as buoy men and ferrymen always row on all our rivers. Such rowing does not interfere with talking, and Semyon, a talkative old man, immediately started a conversation.
“Don’t think so,” he told me, “they are not mad at me.” I’ve already drilled so much into their heads—passion! You also need to know how to cut wood. Let's say in which direction it will fall. Or how to bury yourself so that the butt doesn’t kill you. Now you probably know?
“We know, grandfather,” said the boy in the cap. - Thank you.
- Well, that’s it! They probably didn’t know how to make a saw, the wood splitters and workers!
“Now we can,” said the smallest boy.
- Well, that’s it! Only this science is not tricky. Empty science! This is not enough for a person. You need to know something else.
- And what? - the third boy, covered in freckles, asked worriedly.
- And the fact that now there is war. You need to know about this.
- We know.
- You don’t know anything. You brought me a newspaper the other day, but you can’t really determine what’s written in it.
- What is written in it, Semyon? - I asked.
- I’ll tell you now. Do you smoke?
We each rolled a shag cigarette out of crumpled newspaper. Semyon lit a cigarette and said, looking at the meadows:
“And it says in it about love for one’s native land.” From this love, one must think so, a person goes to fight. Am I right?
- Right.
- What is this - love for the homeland? So you ask them, boys. And it looks like they don’t know anything.
The boys were offended:
- We don’t know!
- And if you know, explain it to me, the old fool. Wait, don't jump out, let me finish. For example, you go into battle and think: “I’m going for my native land.” So tell me: what are you going for?
“I’m walking for a free life,” said the little boy.
- That's not enough. One free life you won't live.
“For our cities and factories,” said the freckled boy.
“For your school,” said the boy in the cap. - And for your people.
“And for your people,” said the little boy. - So that he can have a working and happy life.
“What you say is correct,” said Semyon, “but that’s not enough for me.”
The boys looked at each other and frowned.
- Offended! - said Semyon. - Oh, you judges! But, say, you don’t want to fight for a quail? Protect him from ruin, from death? A?
The boys were silent.
“So I see that you don’t understand everything,” Semyon spoke. - And I, old man, must explain to you. And I have enough of my own things to do: check buoys, hang tags on poles. I also have a delicate matter, a state matter. Because this river also tries to win, it carries steamships, and I’m kind of like a mentor with it, like a guardian, so that everything is in good order. This is how it turns out that all this is correct - freedom, cities,, say, rich factories, schools, and people. This is not why we love our native land. After all, not for one thing?
- What else? - asked the freckled boy.
- Listen. So you walked here from the Laskovsky forest along the beaten road to Lake Tish, and from there through the meadows to the Island and here to me, to the transportation. Did you go?
- Here you go. Did you look at your feet?
- I looked.
- But apparently I didn’t see anything. But we should look, take note, and stop more often. Stop, bend down, pick any flower or grass - and move on.
- And then, in every such grass and in every such flower there is great beauty. Here, for example, is clover. You call him porridge. Pick it up, smell it - it smells like a bee. From this smell evil person and he will smile. Or, say, chamomile. After all, it’s a sin to crush her with a boot. What about the lungwort? Or dream grass. She sleeps at night, bows her head, and feels heavy with dew. Or purchased. Yes, you apparently don’t even know her. The leaf is wide, hard, and underneath there are flowers like white bells. You're about to touch it and they'll ring. That's it! This is a tributary plant. It heals the disease.
- What does inflow mean? - asked the boy in the cap.
- Well, medicinal or something. Our disease is aching bones. From dampness. When bought, the pain subsides, you sleep better and work becomes easier. Or calamus. I sprinkle it on the floors in the lodge. Come to me - my air is Crimean. Yes! Come, look, take note. There's a cloud standing over the river. You don't know this; and I can hear the rain coming from him. Mushroom rain - sporey, not very noisy. This kind of rain is more valuable than gold. It makes the river warmer, the fish play, and it grows all our wealth. I often, in the late afternoon, sit at the gatehouse, weaving baskets, then I’ll look around and forget about all sorts of baskets - after all, that’s what it is! The cloud in the sky is made of hot gold, the sun has already left us, and there, above the earth, it is still radiant with warmth, radiant with light. And it will go out, and the corncrakes will begin to creak in the grasses, and the quails will twitch, and the quails will whistle, and then, look, how the nightingales will strike as if with thunder - on the vines, on the bushes! And the star will rise, stop over the river and stand until the morning - staring, beauty, at clean water. That's it, guys! You look at all this and think: we have little life allotted to us, we have to live for two hundred years - and that’s not enough. Our country is so wonderful! For this beauty, we must also fight with our enemies, protect it, protect it, and not allow it to be desecrated. Am I right? Everybody make noise, “Motherland”, “Motherland”, but here it is, the Motherland, behind the haystacks!
The boys were silent and thoughtful. Reflected in the water, a heron flew slowly by.
“Eh,” said Semyon, “people go to war, but they forgot us old ones!” They forgot in vain, believe me. The old man is a strong, good soldier, his blow is very serious. If they had let us old men in, the Germans would have scratched themselves here too. “Uh-uh,” the Germans would say, “we don’t want to fight with such old people!” No matter! With such old people you will lose your last ports. You're joking, brother!
The boat hit the sandy shore with its nose. Small waders hurriedly ran away from her along the water.
“That’s it, guys,” said Semyon. “You’ll probably complain about your grandfather again—everything’s not enough for him.” Some strange grandfather.
The boys laughed.
“No, understandable, completely understandable,” said the little boy. - Thank you, grandfather.
— Is this for transportation or for something else? - asked Semyon and squinted.
- For something else. And for transportation.
- Well, that’s it!
The boys ran to the sand spit to swim. Semyon looked after them and sighed.
“I try to teach them,” he said. — Teach respect for one’s native land. Without this, a person is not a person, but trash!
The Adventures of the Rhinoceros Beetle (A Soldier's Tale)
When Pyotr Terentyev left the village to go to war, his little son Styopa did not know what to give his father as a farewell gift, and finally gave him an old rhinoceros beetle. He caught him in the garden and put him in a matchbox. The rhinoceros was angry, knocking, demanding to be released. But Styopa did not let him out, but slipped blades of grass into his box so that the beetle would not die of hunger. The rhinoceros gnawed blades of grass, but still continued to knock and scold.
Styopa cut a small window in the box for inflow fresh air. The beetle stuck its furry paw out of the window and tried to grab Styopa’s finger—he probably wanted to scratch it out of anger. But Styopa didn’t give a finger. Then the beetle began to buzz so much in annoyance that Styopa Akulina’s mother shouted:
- Let him out, damn it! He's been buzzing and buzzing all day, his head is swollen!
Pyotr Terentyev grinned at Styopa’s gift, stroked Styopa’s head with a rough hand and hid the box with the beetle in his gas mask bag.
“Just don’t lose him, take care of him,” said Styopa.
“It’s okay to lose such gifts,” answered Peter. - I’ll save it somehow.
Either the beetle liked the smell of rubber, or Peter smelled pleasantly of an overcoat and black bread, but the beetle calmed down and rode with Peter all the way to the front.
At the front, the soldiers were surprised by the beetle, touched its strong horn with their fingers, listened to Peter’s story about his son’s gift, and said:
- What did the boy come up with! And the beetle, apparently, is a fighting one. Just a corporal, not a beetle.
The fighters were interested in how long the beetle would last and how things were going with its food supply - what Peter would feed and water it with. Even though it is a beetle, it cannot live without water.
Peter smiled embarrassedly and replied that if you give a beetle a spikelet, it will feed for a week. How much does he need?
One night, Peter dozed off in a trench and dropped the box with the beetle from his bag. The beetle tossed and turned for a long time, opened a crack in the box, crawled out, moved its antennae, and listened. In the distance the earth thundered and yellow lightning flashed.
The beetle climbed onto an elderberry bush at the edge of the trench to get a better look around. He had never seen such a thunderstorm before. There was too much lightning. The stars did not hang motionless in the sky, like a beetle in their homeland, in Petrova Village, but took off from the earth, illuminated everything around with a bright light, smoked and went out. Thunder roared continuously.
Some beetles whizzed past. One of them hit the elderberry bush so hard that red berries fell from it. The old rhinoceros fell, pretended to be dead and was afraid to move for a long time. He realized that it was better not to mess with such beetles - there were too many of them whistling around.
So he lay there until the morning, until the sun rose. The beetle opened one eye and looked at the sky. It was blue, warm, there was no such sky in his village.
Huge birds howled and fell from this sky like kites. The beetle quickly turned over, stood on its feet, crawled under the burdock - it was afraid that the kites would peck it to death.
In the morning, Peter missed the beetle and began to rummage around on the ground.
- What are you doing? - asked a neighboring fighter with such a tanned face that he could be mistaken for a black man.
“The beetle is gone,” Peter answered sadly. - What a problem!
“I found something to grieve about,” said the tanned fighter. - A beetle is a beetle, an insect. It was never of any use to the soldier.
“It’s not a matter of benefit,” Peter objected, “it’s a matter of memory.” My son gave it to me as a last gift. Here, brother, it’s not the insect that’s precious, it’s the memory that’s precious.
- That's for sure! — the tanned fighter agreed. - This, of course, is a matter of a different order. Just finding it is like shaving crumbs in the ocean-sea. That means the beetle is gone.
Since then, Peter stopped putting the beetle in boxes, but carried it right in his gas mask bag, and the soldiers were even more surprised: “You see, the beetle has become completely tame!”
Sometimes in free time Peter released the beetle, and the beetle crawled around, looked for some roots, chewed leaves. They were no longer the same as in the village.
Instead of birch leaves, there were many elm and poplar leaves. And Peter, reasoning with the soldiers, said:
— My beetle switched to trophy food.
One evening a fresh smell blew into the gas mask bag. big water, and the beetle crawled out of the bag to see where it ended up.
Peter stood with the soldiers on the ferry. The ferry sailed across a wide, bright river. The golden sun was setting behind it, willow trees stood along the banks, and storks with red paws flew above them.
- Vistula! - the soldiers said, scooped up water with their fingernails, drank, and some washed their dusty faces in cool water. - So we drank water from the Don, Dnieper and Bug, and now we’ll drink from the Vistula. The water in the Vistula is painfully sweet.
The beetle breathed in the coolness of the river, moved its antennae, climbed into its bag, and fell asleep.
He woke up from strong shaking. The bag was shaking and bouncing. The beetle quickly got out and looked around. Peter ran through a wheat field, and soldiers ran nearby, shouting “Hurray.” It was getting a little light. Dew glistened on the soldiers' helmets.
At first the beetle clung to the bag with all its might, then realized that it still couldn’t hold on, it opened its wings, took off, flew next to Peter and hummed, as if encouraging Peter.
Some man in a dirty green uniform took aim at Peter with a rifle, but a beetle from the raid hit this man in the eye. The man staggered, dropped his rifle and ran.
The beetle flew after Peter, clung to his shoulders and climbed into the bag only when Peter fell to the ground and shouted to someone: “What bad luck! It hit me in the leg!” At this time, people in dirty green uniforms were already running, looking back, and a thunderous “hurray” was rolling on their heels.
Peter spent a month in the infirmary, and the beetle was given to a Polish boy for safekeeping. This boy lived in the same yard where the infirmary was located.
From the infirmary, Peter again went to the front - his wound was light. He caught up with some of his already in Germany. The smoke from heavy fighting was as if
the earth itself was burning and throwing out huge black clouds from every hollow. The sun was fading in the sky. The beetle must have gone deaf from the thunder of the guns and sat quietly in the bag, without moving.
But one morning he moved and got out. A warm wind blew and carried the last streaks of smoke far to the south. The pure high sun sparkled in the blue depths of the sky. It was so quiet that the beetle could hear the rustling of a leaf on the tree above him. All the leaves hung motionless, and only one trembled and made noise, as if he was happy about something and wanted to tell all the other leaves about it.
Peter sat on the ground, drinking water from a flask. Drops flowed down his unshaven chin and played in the sun. Having drunk, Peter laughed and said:
- Victory!
- Victory! - responded the soldiers sitting nearby.
— Eternal Glory! Our native land yearns for our hands. Now we will make a garden out of it and live, brothers, free and happy.
Soon after this, Peter returned home. Akulina screamed and cried with joy, and Styopa also cried and asked:
— Is the beetle alive?
“He’s alive, my comrade,” answered Peter. — The bullet didn’t touch him. He returned to his native places with the victors. And we will release it with you, Styopa.
Peter took the beetle out of the bag and put it on his palm.
The beetle sat for a long time, looked around, moved its mustache, then rose on its hind legs, opened its wings, folded them again, thought and suddenly took off with a loud buzzing - it recognized its native place. He made a circle over the well, over the dill bed in the garden and flew across the river into the forest, where the guys were calling around, picking mushrooms and wild raspberries. Styopa ran after him for a long time, waving his cap.
“Well,” said Peter when Styopa returned, “now this bug will tell his people about the war and about his heroic behavior.” He will gather all the beetles under the juniper, bow in all directions and tell.
Styopa laughed, and Akulina said:
- Waking up the boy to tell fairy tales. He will actually believe it.
“And let him believe,” answered Peter. - Not only the guys, but even the fighters enjoy the fairy tale.
- Well, is that so! - Akulina agreed and threw pine cones into the samovar.
The samovar hummed like an old rhinoceros beetle. Blue smoke streamed from the samovar pipe, flew into the evening sky, where the young moon was already standing, reflected in the lakes, in the river, looking down on our quiet land.
Leonid Panteleev. My heart's pain
However, it is not only these days that it sometimes completely takes possession of me.
One evening, shortly after the war, in a noisy, brightly lit “Gastronom”, I met Lyonka Zaitsev’s mother. Standing in line, she looked thoughtfully in my direction, and I simply could not help but greet her. Then she took a closer look and, recognizing me, dropped her bag in surprise and suddenly burst into tears.
I stood there, unable to move or utter a word. Nobody understood anything; They assumed that money had been taken from her, and in response to questions she only shouted hysterically: “Get away!!! Leave me alone!.."
That evening I walked around as if dumbfounded. And although Lyonka, as I heard, died in the first battle, perhaps without even having time to kill one German, and I stayed on the front line for about three years and participated in many battles, I felt somehow guilty and infinitely indebted to this old woman , and to everyone who died - friends and strangers - and their mothers, fathers, children and widows...
I can’t even really explain to myself why, but since then I’ve been trying not to catch the eye of this woman and, when I see her on the street - she lives in the next block - I avoid her.
And September 15 is Petka Yudin’s birthday; Every year on this evening his parents gather the surviving friends of his childhood.
Adults of forty years old come, but they drink not wine, but tea with sweets, shortbread cake and apple pie - with what Petka loved most of all.
Everything is being done as it was before the war, when in this room a big-faced, cheerful boy, killed somewhere near Rostov and not even buried in the confusion of a panicked retreat, was noisy, laughing and commanding. At the head of the table is Petka's chair, his cup of fragrant tea and a plate on which the mother carefully puts nuts in sugar, the largest piece of candied fruit cake and a crust of apple pie. As if Petka could taste even a piece and scream, as he used to, at the top of his lungs: “This is so delicious, brothers! Pile on!.."
And I feel indebted to Petka’s old men; the feeling of some awkwardness and guilt that I’ve returned, and Petka died, doesn’t leave me all evening. In my thoughts, I don’t hear what they are saying; I’m already far, far away... My heart claws painfully: I see in my mind the whole of Russia, where in every second or third family someone did not return...
Leonid Panteleev. Handkerchief
Recently I met a very nice and a good man. I was traveling from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow, and then at night, at some small, remote station, in a compartment where until then there was no one but me, a huge red-faced guy in a wide bearskin coat, in white cloaks and a fawn long-eared hat stumbles in .
I was already falling asleep when he burst in. But then, as he rattled the entire carriage with his suitcases and baskets, I immediately woke up, opened my eyes and, I remember, even got scared.
“Fathers! - Think. “What kind of bear fell on my head?!”
And this giant slowly put his belongings on the shelves and began to undress.
I took off my hat and saw that his head was completely white and gray.
He took off his doha - under the doha is a military tunic without shoulder straps, and on it there are not one, not two, but four rows of order ribbons.
I think: “Wow! And the bear, it turns out, is really experienced!”
And I already look at him with respect. True, I didn’t open my eyes, but I made slits and watched carefully.
And he sat down in the corner by the window, puffed, caught his breath, then unbuttoned a pocket on his tunic and, I saw, took out a very, very small handkerchief. An ordinary handkerchief, the kind young girls carry in their purses.
I remember I was surprised even then. I think: “Why does he need this handkerchief? After all, such a handkerchief probably wouldn’t be enough for such an uncle to fill his entire nose?!”
But he didn’t do anything with this handkerchief, he just smoothed it out on his knee, rolled it into a tube and put it in another pocket. Then he sat, thought and began to pull off his burqas.
I was not interested in this, and soon I fell asleep for real, and not feignedly.
Well, the next morning we met him and got to talking: who, where, and what business we were going on... Half an hour later I already knew that my fellow traveler was a former tanker, a colonel, he fought throughout the war, was wounded eight or nine times, shell-shocked twice, drowned, escaped from a burning tank...
The colonel was traveling that time from a business trip to Kazan, where he was then working and where his family was. He was in a hurry to get home, he was worried, and every now and then he went out into the corridor and asked the conductor whether the train was late and how many more stops there were before the transfer.
I remember asking how big his family was.
- How can I tell you... Not very big, perhaps. In general, you, me, and you and I.
- How much does this cost?
- Four, it seems.
“No,” I say. - As far as I understand, these are not four, but only two.
“Well then,” he laughs. - If you guessed right, nothing can be done. Really two.
He said this and, I see, unbuttons the pocket on his tunic, puts two fingers in there and again pulls his little, girlish scarf into the light of day.
I felt funny, I couldn’t stand it and said:
- Excuse me, Colonel, what kind of handkerchief do you have - a lady's one?
He even seemed offended.
“Allow me,” he says. - Why did you decide that he was a lady’s?
I speak:
- Small.
- Oh, that's how it is? Small?
He folded the handkerchief, held it on his heroic palm and said:
- Do you know, by the way, what kind of handkerchief this is?
I speak:
- No, I do not know.
- In fact of the matter. But this handkerchief, if you want to know, is not simple.
- What is he like? - I speak. - Enchanted, or what?
- Well, enchanted is not enchanted, but something like this... In general, if you want, I can tell you.
I speak:
- Please. Very interesting.
“I can’t vouch for its interestingness, but for me personally this story is of great importance. In a word, if there is nothing else to do, listen. We need to start from afar. It happened in nineteen forty-three, at the very end, before New Year holidays. I was a major then and commanded a tank regiment. Our unit was stationed near Leningrad. Have you not been to St. Petersburg during these years? Oh, they were, it turns out? Well, then you don’t need to explain what Leningrad was like at that time. It's cold, hungry, bombs and shells are falling in the streets. Meanwhile, in the city they live, work, study...
And on these very days, our unit took patronage over one of the Leningrad orphanages. In this house, orphans were raised whose fathers and mothers died either at the front or from hunger in the city itself. There is no need to tell how they lived there. The ration was, of course, enhanced compared to others, but still, you know, the guys didn’t go to bed well-fed. Well, we were a wealthy people, we were supplied at the front, we didn’t spend money - we gave these guys something. They gave them sugar, fats, canned food from their rations... We bought and donated to the orphanage two cows, a horse and team, a pig with piglets, all kinds of birds: chickens, roosters, well, and everything else - clothes, toys, musical instruments... By the way, I remember one hundred and twenty-five pairs of children’s sleds were presented to them: please, they say, ride, children, to the fear of your enemies!..
And under New Year We arranged a Christmas tree for the children. Of course, they tried their best here too: they got a Christmas tree, as they say, higher than the ceiling. Alone Christmas decorations eight boxes were delivered.
And on the first of January, on the very holiday, we went to visit our sponsors. We grabbed some gifts and drove the delegation to the Kirov Islands in two Jeeps.
They met us and almost knocked us off our feet. The whole camp poured out into the yard, laughing, shouting “hurray”, rushing to hug...
We brought them each a personal gift. But they, too, you know, don’t want to remain in debt to us. They also prepared a surprise for each of us. One has an embroidered pouch, the other some kind of drawing, a notebook, a notepad, a flag with a sickle and a hammer...
And a little fair-haired girl runs up to me on fast legs, blushes like a poppy, looks fearfully at my grandiose figure and says:
“Congratulations, military man. “Here’s a gift for you,” he says, “from me.”
And she holds out her hand, and in her hand she has a small white bag tied with a green woolen thread.
I wanted to take the gift, but she blushed even more and said:
“Only you know what? Please don’t untie this bag now. Do you know when you will untie him?
I speak:
“And then, when you take Berlin.”
Have you seen it?! The time, I say, forty-four, the very beginning of it, the Germans are still sitting in Detskoye Selo and near Pulkovo, shrapnel shells are falling on the streets, in their orphanage the day before the cook was wounded by a shrapnel...
And this girl, you see, is thinking about Berlin. And the little girl was sure, she didn’t doubt for a single minute that sooner or later our people would be in Berlin. How could one really not go all out and take this damned Berlin?!
I then sat her on my knee, kissed her and said:
“Okay, daughter. I promise you that I will visit Berlin and defeat the Nazis, and that I will not open your gift before this hour.”
And what do you think - after all, he kept his word.
— Have you really been to Berlin?
— And, imagine, I had a chance to visit Berlin. And the main thing is that I really didn’t open this bag until Berlin. I carried it with me for a year and a half. Drowning with him. The tank caught fire twice. He was in hospital. I changed three or four gymnasts during this time. A bag
everything with me is inviolable. Of course, sometimes it was interesting to see what was there. But nothing can be done, I gave my word, and a soldier’s word is strong.
Well, it takes a long time or a short time, but finally we are in Berlin. Conquered. The last enemy line was broken.
They broke into the city. We walk through the streets. I am in front, riding on the lead tank.
And so, I remember, standing at the gate, near the broken house, a German woman. Still young.
Skinny. Pale. Holding a girl's hand. The situation in Berlin, frankly speaking, is not for childhood. There are fires all around, here and there shells are still falling, machine guns are knocking. And the girl, imagine, stands, looks with all her eyes, smiles... Of course! She’s probably interested: other people’s guys are driving cars, they’re singing new, unfamiliar songs...
And I don’t know why, but suddenly this little fair-haired German girl reminded me of my Leningrad orphanage friend. And I remembered the bag.
“Well, I think it’s possible now. Completed the task. He defeated the fascists. Berlin took. I have every right to see what’s there...”
I reach into my pocket, into my tunic, and pull out a package. Of course, no traces of its former splendor remain. He was all crumpled, torn, smoked, smelling of gunpowder...
I unwrap the bag, and there... Well, frankly speaking, there is nothing special there. There's just a handkerchief lying there. An ordinary handkerchief with a red and green border. He's tied up with Garus or something. Or something else. I don't know, I'm not an expert in these matters. In a word, this very lady’s handkerchief, as you called it.
And the colonel once again pulled out of his pocket and smoothed his small scarf, cut into a red and green herringbone pattern, on his knee.
This time I looked at him with completely different eyes. Indeed, this was not an easy handkerchief.
I even gently touched it with my finger.
“Yes,” the colonel continued, smiling. — This same rag was lying there, wrapped in a notebook. checkered paper. And there's a note pinned to it. And on the note, in huge, clumsy letters with incredible errors, is scrawled:
“Happy New Year, dear soldier! With new happiness! I give you a handkerchief as a souvenir. When you're in Berlin, wave it to me, please. And when I find out that ours have taken Berlin, I will also look out the window and wave to you. My mother gave me this handkerchief when she was alive. I only blew my nose in it once, but don’t be shy, I washed it. I wish you good health! Hooray!!! Forward! To Berlin! Lida Gavrilova.
Well... I won’t hide it - I cried. I haven’t cried since childhood, I had no idea what kind of thing tears were, I lost my wife and daughter during the war years, and even then there were no tears, but here - on you, please! - winner, I enter the defeated capital of the enemy, and cursed tears run down my cheeks. It’s nerves, of course... After all, victory didn’t fall into your hands. We had to work before our tanks rumbled through Berlin streets and alleys...
Two hours later I was at the Reichstag. By this time, our people had already hoisted the red Soviet banner over its ruins.
Of course, I went up to the roof. The view from there, I must say, is scary. There is fire, smoke everywhere, and there is still shooting here and there. And people’s faces are happy, festive, people hug, kiss...
And then, on the roof of the Reichstag, I remembered Lidochka’s order.
“No, I think whatever you want, but you definitely have to do it if she asked.”
I ask some young officer:
“Listen,” I say, “Lieutenant, where is our east going to be?”
“Who knows,” he says, “who knows.” Here right hand You can’t tell it from the left one, let alone...
Luckily, one of our watches turned out to have a compass. He showed me where east is. And I turned in this direction and waved my white handkerchief there several times. And it seemed to me, you know, that far, far from Berlin, on the banks of the Neva, a little girl Lida is now standing and also waving her thin hand to me and also rejoicing at our great victory and the world we have won...
The colonel straightened his handkerchief on his knee, smiled and said:
- Here. And you say - ladies'. No, you are wrong. This handkerchief is very dear to my soldier’s heart. That's why I carry it with me like a talisman...
I sincerely apologized to my companion and asked if he knew where this girl Lida was now and what was wrong with her.
- Lida, where are you saying now? Yes. I know a little. Lives in the city of Kazan. On Kirovskaya street. He studies in the eighth grade. An excellent pupil. Komsomolskaya Pravda. Currently, hopefully, he is waiting for his father.
- How! Has her father been found?
- Yes. I found some...
- What do you mean “some”? Excuse me, where is he now?
- Yes, here he is sitting in front of you. Are you surprised? There is nothing surprising. In the summer of 1945, I adopted Lida. And, you know, I don’t regret it at all. My daughter is lovely...
Stories by Sergei Alekseev about the Great Patriotic War. Interesting, educational and unusual stories about the behavior of soldiers and fighters during the war.
GARDENERS
It was not long before Battle of Kursk. Reinforcements have arrived at the rifle unit.
The foreman walked around the fighters. Walks along the line. A corporal is walking nearby. Holds a pencil and notepad in his hands.
The foreman looked at the first of the soldiers:
— Do you know how to plant potatoes?
— Do you know how to plant potatoes?
- I can! - the soldier said loudly.
- Two steps forward.
The soldier is out of action.
“Write to the gardeners,” said the sergeant major to the corporal.
— Do you know how to plant potatoes?
- I haven’t tried it.
- I didn’t have to, but if necessary...
“That’s enough,” said the foreman.
The fighters came forward. Anatoly Skurko found himself in the ranks of skilled soldiers. Soldier Skurko wonders: where are they going to go, those who know how? “It’s too late to plant potatoes. (Summer is already in full swing.) If you dig it, it’s very early in time.”
Soldier Skurko tells fortunes. And other fighters are wondering:
— Should I plant potatoes?
— Sow carrots?
— Cucumbers for the headquarters canteen?
The foreman looked at the soldiers.
“Well,” said the foreman. “From now on, you will be among the miners,” and hands the mines to the soldiers.
The dashing foreman noticed that those who know how to plant potatoes lay mines faster and more reliably.
Soldier Skurko grinned. The other soldiers couldn't hold back their smiles either.
The gardeners got down to business. Of course, not immediately, not at the same moment. Laying mines is not such a simple matter. The soldiers underwent special training.
Miners stretched for many kilometers to the north, south, and west of Kursk minefields and screens. On the first day of the Battle of Kursk alone, more than a hundred were blown up on these fields and barriers. fascist tanks and self-propelled guns.
The miners are coming.
- How are you, gardeners?
- Everything is in perfect order.
UNUSUAL OPERATION
Mokapka Zyablov was amazed. Something incomprehensible was happening at their station. A boy lived with his grandfather and grandmother near the town of Sudzhi in a small working-class village at the Lokinskaya station. He was the son of a hereditary railway worker.
Mokapka loved to hang around the station for hours. Especially these days. One by one the echelons come here. They give you a ride military equipment. Mokapka knows that our troops defeated the Nazis near Kursk. They are driving the enemies to the west. Although small, but smart, Mokapka sees that the echelons are coming here. He understands: this means that here, in these places, a further offensive is planned.
The trains are coming, the locomotives are chugging. Soldiers unload military cargo.
Mokapka was spinning around somewhere near the tracks. He sees: a new train has arrived. Tanks stand on platforms. A lot of. The boy began to count the tanks. I took a closer look and they were made of wood. How can we fight against them?!
The boy rushed to his grandmother.
“Wooden,” he whispers, “tanks.”
- Really? - the grandmother clasped her hands. He rushed to his grandfather:
- Wooden, grandfather, tanks. Raised old eyes for a grandson. The boy rushed to the station. He looks: the train is coming again. The train stopped. Mokapka looked - the guns were on platforms. A lot of. No less than there were tanks.
Mokapka took a closer look - after all, the guns were also wooden! Instead of trunks there are round timbers sticking out.
The boy rushed to his grandmother.
“Wooden,” he whispers, “cannons.”
“Really?..” the grandmother clasped her hands. He rushed to his grandfather:
— Wooden, grandfather, guns.
“Something new,” said the grandfather.
A lot of strange things were going on at the station back then. Somehow boxes with shells arrived. Mountains grew of these boxes. Happy Mockup:
- Our fascists will have a blast!
And suddenly he finds out: there are empty boxes at the station. “Why are there whole mountains of such and such?!” - the boy wonders.
But here’s something completely incomprehensible. The troops are coming here. A lot of. The column hurries after the column. They go openly, they arrive before dark.
The boy has an easy character. I immediately met the soldiers. Until dark, he kept spinning around. In the morning he runs to the soldiers again. And then he finds out: the soldiers left these places at night.
Mokapka stands there, wondering again.
Mokapka did not know that our people used military stratagem near Sudzha.
The Nazis conduct reconnaissance from airplanes Soviet troops. They see: trains arrive at the station, bring tanks, bring guns.
The Nazis also notice mountains of boxes with shells. They notice that troops are moving here. A lot of. Behind the column comes a column. The fascists see the troops approaching, but the enemies do not know that they are leaving unnoticed from here at night.
We have collected for you the most best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. First-person stories, 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 do not sit 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 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 from military school in the fifties, again went through military service in Germany, but already 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 had 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 activities of the fifth column, that is, internal enemies, also caused enormous indignation among the population. 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 food cards and hers were stolen in mid-May, which made us very hungry again. And we had to prepare for winter.
We not only cultivated and planted vegetable gardens in Rybatsky and Murzinka, but also received a fair strip of land in the garden near 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, that's it 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 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 moved his legs with difficulty, his huge eyes on his withered old face 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 after the war should become free city. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering both “Window to Europe” and “ Bronze Horseman", And historical meaning for Russia access to 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 of the death an entire army and betrayal of Vlasov. I had to believe this. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals of the 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 celebrated the New Year with my wife alone, having returned around 11 o’clock to the closet where we lived at the hospital, from a tour 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 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. The most difficult combination was required all the time physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the precision of a surgeon's dry work.
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 merit, a 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
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
School in the partisan region.
T. Cat. ,From the book “Children-Heroes”,
Getting stuck in a marshy swamp, falling and getting up again, we went to our own - to the partisans. The Germans were fierce in their native village.
And so whole month the Germans bombed our camp. “The partisans have been destroyed,” they finally sent a report to their high command. But invisible hands Trains were again derailed, weapons depots were blown up, and German garrisons were destroyed.
Summer is over, autumn is already trying on its colorful, crimson outfit. It was difficult for us to imagine September without school.
- These are the letters I know! - eight-year-old Natasha Drozd once said and drew a round “O” in the sand with a stick and next to it - an uneven gate “P”. Her friend drew some numbers. The girls were playing school, and neither one nor the other noticed with what sadness and warmth the commander of the partisan detachment Kovalevsky was watching them. In the evening at the council of commanders he said:
“The kids need school...” and added quietly: “We can’t deprive them of their childhood.”
That same night, Komsomol members Fedya Trutko and Sasha Vasilevsky went out on a combat mission, with Pyotr Ilyich Ivanovsky with them. They returned a few days later. Pencils, pens, primers, and problem books were taken out of their pockets and bosoms. There was a sense of peace and home, of great human care, from these books here, among the swamps, where a mortal battle for life was taking place.
“It’s easier to blow up a bridge than to get your books,” Pyotr Ilyich flashed his teeth cheerfully and took out... a pioneer horn.
None of the partisans said a word about the risk they were exposed to. There could have been an ambush in every house, but it never occurred to any of them to abandon the task or return empty-handed. ,
Three classes were organized: first, second and third. School... Pegs driven into the ground, intertwined with wicker, a cleared area, instead of a board and chalk - sand and a stick, instead of desks - stumps, instead of a roof over your head - camouflage from German planes. In cloudy weather we were plagued by mosquitoes, sometimes snakes crawled in, but we didn’t pay attention to anything.
How the children valued their clearing school, how they hung on every word of the teacher! There were one textbook, two per class. There were no books at all on some subjects. We remembered a lot from the words of the teacher, who sometimes came to class straight from a combat mission, with a rifle in his hands, belted with ammunition.
The soldiers brought everything they could get for us from the enemy, but there was not enough paper. We carefully removed birch bark from fallen trees and wrote on it with coals. There has never been a case where someone did not comply homework. Only those guys who were urgently sent to reconnaissance skipped classes.
It turned out that we only had nine pioneers; the remaining twenty-eight guys had to be accepted as pioneers. We sewed a banner from a parachute donated to the partisans and made a pioneer uniform. Partisans were accepted into pioneers, and the detachment commander himself tied ties for new arrivals. The headquarters of the pioneer squad was immediately elected.
Without stopping our studies, we built a new dugout school for the winter. To insulate it, a lot of moss was needed. They pulled it out so hard that their fingers hurt, sometimes they tore off their nails, they cut their hands painfully with grass, but no one complained. Nobody demanded from us excellent studies, however, each of us made this demand on ourselves. And when the hard news came that our beloved comrade Sasha Vasilevsky had been killed, all the pioneers of the squad took a solemn oath: to study even better.
At our request, the squad was given a name dead friend. That same night, avenging Sasha, the partisans blew up 14 German vehicles and derailed the train. The Germans sent 75 thousand punitive forces against the partisans. The blockade began again. Everyone who knew how to handle weapons went into battle. Families retreated into the depths of the swamps, and our pioneer squad also retreated. Our clothes were freezing, we ate once a day brewed in hot water flour. But, retreating, we grabbed all our textbooks. Classes continued at the new location. And we kept the oath given to Sasha Vasilevsky. In the spring exams, all the pioneers answered without hesitation. The strict examiners - the detachment commander, the commissar, the teachers - were pleased with us.
As a reward best students received the right to participate in shooting competitions. They fired from the detachment commander's pistol. This was the highest honor for the guys.