We have collected for you the most vivid memories of female veterans from Svetlana Alexievich’s book “War Doesn’t Have a Woman’s Face.”
1. “We drove for many days... We got out with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. We looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They were singing. They were waving at us - some with kerchiefs, some with caps. It became clear: there are not enough men, they died in the ground, or in captivity. Now we are in their place... Mom wrote a prayer to me. Maybe it helped - I kissed the medallion before the battle. .."
“Once at night a whole company conducted reconnaissance in force in our regiment’s sector. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the soldiers wouldn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” She didn’t listen and crawled. She found a wounded man and dragged him for eight hours, tying his arm with a belt. She dragged a living one. The commander found out and rashly announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. But the deputy regiment commander reacted differently: “Deserves a reward.” At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen she turned gray. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And they considered me dead... At nineteen... My granddaughter is like this now. I look at her and don’t believe it. Child!
2. “I was on night duty... I went into the ward of the seriously wounded. The captain was lying... The doctors warned me before duty that he would die at night... He wouldn’t live until the morning... I asked him: “Well, how? How can I help you?" I’ll never forget... He suddenly smiled, such a bright smile on his exhausted face: “Unbutton your robe... Show me your breasts... I haven’t seen my wife for a long time..." I felt ashamed, what am I - she answered him there. She left and returned an hour later. He lies dead and that smile is on his face..."
“And when he appeared for the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and somehow my hands began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It’s not a woman’s business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"
3. “And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward would not go to war on his own. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline physicians took second place after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What is it, for example, to pull wounded from the battlefield? I’ll tell you now... We went on the attack, and they started mowing us down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. They weren’t all killed, the Germans didn’t stop firing. For everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each one saved at most two. three people. They were awarded sparingly, at the beginning of the war they did not scatter awards. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon: where was the weapon? . In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal "For Military Merit", for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From under bullets..."
“What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, because of this shock my whole body tensed up, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”
“I was thrown against a brick wall by a hurricane wave. I lost consciousness... When I came to my senses, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely opened her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I meet our older sister, she didn’t recognize me and asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not there.” They quickly bandaged my head and my left arm above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. It was getting dark before my eyes and sweat was pouring out. I started handing out dinner and fell. They brought me back to consciousness, and all I could hear was: “Hurry! Hurry up!” And again - “Hurry! Hurry up!” A few days later they took more blood from me for the seriously wounded.”
4. “We went to the front quite young. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom tried it on at home... I grew ten centimeters...”
“They organized nursing courses, and my father took my sister and me there. I am fifteen years old, and my sister is fourteen. He said: “This is all I can give to win. My girls...” There was no other thought then. A year later I went to the front..."
“Our mother had no sons... And when Stalingrad was besieged, we voluntarily went to the front. All together. The whole family: mother and five daughters, and by this time the father had already fought ... "
5. “I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defending the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everything in the village they saw that his daughter was at the front..."
“I remember they let me go. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, I loved candy terribly. I say:
- Give me some sweets.
The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what are cards, what is a blockade? All the people in line turned to me, and I had a rifle bigger than me. When they were given to us, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And everyone suddenly began to ask, the whole line:
- Give her some sweets. Cut out the coupons from us.
And they gave it to me."
“And for the first time in my life, it happened... Ours... Feminine... I saw blood on myself, and I screamed:
- I was hurt...
During reconnaissance, we had a paramedic with us, an elderly man. He comes to me:
- Where did it hurt?
- I don’t know where... But the blood...
He, like a father, told me everything... I went to reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: either my machine gun failed, or we were surrounded. You wake up and your teeth are grinding. Do you remember where you are? There or here?”
7. “I went to the front as a materialist. An atheist. I left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was taught well. And there... There I began to pray... I always prayed before a battle, I read my prayers. Simple words... My words. .. The point is that I should return to my mother and father. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. Nobody saw how I prayed secretly. Because... We were different then. , other people lived then. Do you understand?”
“It was impossible to attack us with uniforms: they were always in the blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar on it. In total, I carried out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion... They were carrying men two to three times heavier than us. And they are even more seriously wounded. You are dragging him and his weapon, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You put eighty kilograms on yourself and drag it. You lose... You go after the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And you yourself are forty-eight kilograms—ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore..."
“I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment...
“I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I’m all white. I was seriously wounded, concussed, and I couldn’t hear well in one ear. My mother greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night.” My brother died at the front. She cried: “It’s the same now - give birth to girls or boys.”
9. “And I’ll say something else... The worst thing for me in the war was wearing men’s underpants. That was scary. And this somehow... I can’t express myself... Well, first of all, it’s very ugly. .. You’re at war, you’re going to die for your Motherland, and you’re wearing men’s underwear. In general, you look ridiculous. Men’s underwear was made of long ones. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them were wearing men’s underwear. Oh, my God! In winter and summer. Four years... We crossed the Soviet border... They finished off, as our commissar said during political training, the beast in his own den. Near the first Polish village, we were given new uniforms and... And! And! They brought women's panties and bras for the first time during the entire war... Well, I see... We saw normal women's underwear... Why aren't you crying? .. Well, why?"
“At the age of eighteen, on the Kursk Bulge, I was awarded the medal “For Military Merit” and the Order of the Red Star, at the age of nineteen - the Order of the Patriotic War, second degree. When new additions arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They were also eighteen to nineteen years old, and they asked mockingly: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in battle?” They pester you with jokes: “Do bullets penetrate the armor of a tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Shchegolevatykh. His leg was broken. I splint him, and he asks me for forgiveness: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then...”
“We disguised ourselves. We are sitting. We are waiting for night to finally make an attempt to break through. And Lieutenant Misha T., the battalion commander was wounded, and he was performing the duties of a battalion commander, he was twenty years old, and began to remember how he loved to dance and play the guitar. Then he asks:
-Have you even tried it?
- What? What have you tried? “But I was terribly hungry.”
- Not what, but who... Babu!
And before the war there were cakes like this. With that name.
- No-no...
“And I haven’t tried it yet either.” You’ll die and won’t know what love is... They’ll kill us at night...
- Fuck you, fool! “It dawned on me what he meant.”
They died for life, not yet knowing what life was. We have only read about everything in books. I loved movies about love..."
11. “She shielded her loved one from the mine fragment. The fragments fly - it’s just a split second... How did she manage? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he remained alive. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave... He carried it and kissed it... There were five of us, Konakovo girls. ...And alone I returned to my mother..."
“A separate smoke masking detachment was organized, commanded by the former commander of the torpedo boat division, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Bogdanov. Girls, mostly with secondary technical education or after the first years of college. Our task is to protect the ships and cover them with smoke. The shelling will begin, the sailors are waiting: “I wish the girls would put up some smoke. It’s calmer with him.” They drove out in cars with a special mixture, and at that time everyone hid in a bomb shelter. We, as they say, invited fire upon ourselves. The Germans were hitting this smoke screen..."
12. “I’m bandaging the tankman... The battle is on, there’s a roar. He asks: “Girl, what’s your name?” Even some kind of compliment. It was so strange for me to pronounce my name in this roar, in this horror - Olya.”
“And here I am the gun commander. And that means I am in the one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was bleeding from the nose and ears, complete indigestion set in... My throat was dry to the point of vomiting... At night it was not so scary, but during the day it was very scary. It seems that the plane is flying straight at you, specifically at your gun. It's ramming at you! This is one moment... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is over!
13. “And by the time they found me, my feet were severely frostbitten. Apparently, I was covered in snow, but I was breathing, and a hole formed in the snow... Such a tube... The ambulance dogs found me. They dug up the snow and brought me my earflap hat. There I had a passport of death, everyone had such passports: which relatives, where to report me, they put me on a raincoat, there was a sheepskin coat full of blood... But no one paid attention to my legs... I was six months old. I was in the hospital. They wanted to amputate my leg, amputate it above the knee, because gangrene was starting. Well, who needs me to live as a cripple? I'm needed, stump! I'll strangle..."
“They also received a tank there. We were both senior driver mechanics, and there should only be one driver in a tank. The command decided to appoint me as commander of the IS-122 tank, and my husband as senior mechanic-driver. And so we reached Germany. Both are wounded. We have awards. There were quite a few female tankers on medium tanks, but on heavy tanks I was the only one.”
14. “We were told to dress in military uniform, and I was about fifty meters. I got into my trousers, and the girls tied them up around me.”
“As long as he hears... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, is it really possible to die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He’s already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I’m still whispering something to him... I’m calming him down... The names have been erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain..."
“We captured a nurse... A day later, when we recaptured that village, there were dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers lying everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her breasts were cut off... She was impaled... It was frosty, and she was white and white, and her hair was all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack we found letters from home and a green rubber bird. A children's toy..."
“Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. There is no other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I chewed it up, bandaged it... I bandage it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I will fight again." In a fever..."
“The whole war I was afraid that my legs would be crippled. I had beautiful legs. What to a man? He’s not so scared even if he loses his legs. Still a hero. Groom! If a woman gets hurt, then her fate will be decided. Women's fate..."
16. “The men will build a fire at the bus stop, shake the lice, dry themselves. Where are we? We’ll run for some shelter, and there we’ll undress. I had a knitted sweater, so the lice were sitting on every millimeter, in every loop. You’ll look, you’ll feel nauseous. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice... I had them all..."
17. “Near Makeyevka, in the Donbass, I was wounded, wounded in the thigh. There was such a fragment, like a pebble, sitting there. I feel blood, I put an individual bag there too. And then I run, bandage it. It’s a shame to tell anyone, it wounded the girl, Yes, where - in the buttocks... At the age of sixteen, it’s embarrassing to admit to anyone. Well, I ran and bandaged until I lost consciousness from the loss of blood..."
“The doctor arrived, did a cardiogram, and they asked me:
— When did you have a heart attack?
— What heart attack?
“Your whole heart is scarred.”
And these scars are apparently from the war. You approach the target, you are shaking all over. The whole body is covered with trembling, because there is fire below: fighters are shooting, anti-aircraft guns are shooting... We flew mainly at night. For a while they tried to send us on missions during the day, but they immediately abandoned this idea. Our "Po-2" shot down from a machine gun... We made up to twelve sorties per night. I saw the famous ace pilot Pokryshkin when he arrived from a combat flight. He was a strong man, he was not twenty or twenty-three years old like us: while the plane was being refueled, the technician managed to take off his shirt and unscrew it. It was dripping as if he had been in the rain. Now you can easily imagine what happened to us. You arrive and you can’t even get out of the cabin, they pulled us out. They couldn’t carry the tablet anymore; they dragged it along the ground.”
18. “We strived... We didn’t want people to say about us: “Oh, those women!” And we tried harder than men, we still had to prove that we were no worse than men. And for a long time there was arrogance and condescension towards us attitude: "These women will fight..."
“Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream! One day the division commander arrived, saw me and asked: “What kind of teenager is this? Why are you holding him? He should be sent to study."
“We were happy when we took out a pot of water to wash our hair. If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was an elderly man and understood everything, didn’t take excess underwear from his duffel bag, and if he’s young, he’ll definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves..."
“Let’s go... There are about two hundred girls, and behind us there are about two hundred men. It's hot. Hot summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild... And after us there are red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide anything here? The soldiers follow behind and pretend that they don’t notice anything... They don’t look at their feet... Our trousers dried up, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds there, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything... We kept watch: when the soldiers hung their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces... Later they guessed and laughed: “Sergeant major, give us some other underwear. The girls took ours.” There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... Not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, appeared only two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts... Well, let's go... Wearing boots! My legs were also fried. Let's go... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The bombing is terrible, men - who knows where to hide. Our name is... But we don’t hear the bombing, we have no time for bombing, we’d rather go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... Here it is... The shame was worse than death. And several girls died in the water..."
20. “Finally we got the assignment. They brought me to my platoon... The soldiers looked: some with mockery, some even with anger, and others shrugging their shoulders like that - everything was immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that, they say, you have a new commander platoon, everyone immediately howled: “Uh-uh-uh...” One even spat: “Ugh!” And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived held me in their arms. They carried my dugout. They were proud of me.”
“We set out on a mission in a quick march. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of long-range artillerymen began to pass, one suddenly jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and looked for a “frame” in the sky. I don't detect any plane. It's quiet all around, not a sound. Where is that “frame”? Then one of my sappers asked permission to leave the ranks. I see him heading towards that artilleryman and slapping him in the face. Before I had time to think of anything, the artilleryman shouted: “Boys, they’re beating our people!” Other artillerymen jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw down the probes, mine detectors, and duffel bags and rushed to his rescue. A fight ensued. I couldn't understand what happened? Why did the platoon get involved in a fight? Every minute counts, and there’s such a mess here. I give the command: “Platoon, get into formation!” Nobody pays attention to me. Then I pulled out a pistol and shot into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout. By the time everyone was calmed down, a significant amount of time had passed. The captain approached my platoon and asked: “Who is the eldest here?” I reported. His eyes widened, he was even confused. Then he asked: “What happened here?” I couldn't answer because I didn't really know the reason. Then my platoon commander came out and told me how it all happened. That’s how I learned what “frame” was, what an offensive word it was for a woman. Something like a whore. Frontline curse..."
21. “Are you asking about love? I’m not afraid to tell the truth... I was a pepezhe, which stands for “field wife.” Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander... I didn't love him. He was a good man, but I didn't love him. And I went to his dugout a few months later. Where to go? There are only men around, it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. During the battle it was not as scary as after the battle, especially when we were resting and re-forming. How they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Sister!”, and after the battle everyone is guarding you... You can’t get out of the dugout at night... Did the other girls tell you this or did they not admit it? They were ashamed, I think... They remained silent. Proud! And it all happened... But they are silent about it... It is not accepted... No... For example, I was the only woman in the battalion who lived in a common dugout. Together with men. They gave me a place, but what a separate place it is, the whole dugout is six meters. I woke up at night from waving my arms, then I would hit one on the cheeks, on the hands, then on the other. I was wounded, ended up in the hospital and waved my hands there. The nanny will wake you up at night: “What are you doing?” Who will you tell?"
22. “We were burying him... He was lying on a raincoat, he was just killed. The Germans are firing at us. We need to bury him quickly... Right now... We found old birch trees, chose the one that stood at a distance from the old oak tree . The biggest one. Near it... I tried to remember it so that I could come back and find this place later. Here the village ends, here there is a fork... But how to remember if one birch tree is already burning before our eyes... How? They began to say goodbye... They told me: “You are the first!” My heart jumped, I realized... That... Everyone, it turns out, knows about my love. Everyone knows... The thought struck: maybe he knew too. ? Here... He lies... Now they will lower him into the ground... They will cover him with sand... But I was terribly happy at the thought that maybe he also knew. What if he liked me? alive and will answer me something now... I remembered how on New Year’s Day he gave me a German chocolate bar. I didn’t eat it for a month, I carried it in my pocket now, I remember this moment all my life. .. Bombs are flying... He... Lying on the raincoat... This moment... And I am happy... I stand and smile to myself. Abnormal. I am glad that maybe he knew about my love... I came up and kissed him. I had never kissed a man before... This was the first..."
23. “How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do it without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there!” They lured young p... our men. Front line b... Military bitches..." They insulted me in every way... The Russian dictionary is rich... A guy from a dance sees me off, I suddenly feel bad, bad, my heart is pounding. I go and go and sit in a snowdrift. "What's wrong you?" - "Nothing. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And you have to learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet were wearing out in boots - size forty. It’s unusual for someone to hug me. I’m used to answering myself. for myself. I was waiting for affectionate words, but I didn’t understand them. They were like children’s words. At the front, among men, my friend taught me strong language, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin."
“My legs were gone... My legs were cut off... They saved me there, in the forest... The operation took place in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there wasn’t even iodine, they sawed my legs, both legs, with a simple saw... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away, we went to another partisan detachment to get iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw... A carpenter's saw... We had a surgeon, he himself also had no legs, he talked about me, other doctors said this: “I bow to her. I have operated on so many men, but I have never seen such men. He won’t scream.” I held on... I'm used to being strong in public..."
Running up to the car, she opened the door and began to report:
- Comrade General, according to your orders...
I heard:
- Leave...
She stood at attention. The general didn’t even turn to me, but looked at the road through the car window. He is nervous and often looks at his watch. I'm standing. He turns to his orderly:
- Where is that sapper commander?
I tried to report again:
- Comrade General...
He finally turned to me and with annoyance:
- Why the hell do I need you!
I understood everything and almost burst out laughing. Then his orderly was the first to guess:
- Comrade General, maybe she is the commander of the sappers?
The general stared at me:
- Who are you?
— Comrade General, sapper platoon commander.
-Are you a platoon commander? - he was indignant.
- Are these your sappers working?
- That's right, Comrade General!
- Got it wrong: general, general...
He got out of the car, walked a few steps forward, then came back to me. He stood and looked around. And to his orderly:
- Have you seen it?
25. “My husband was a senior driver, and I was a driver. We rode in a freight car for four years, and our son went with us. During the entire war, he didn’t even see a cat. When he caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes attacked, and he hugged her: “Dear kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don't see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you." Child... Everything for a child should be childish... He fell asleep with the words: "Mommy, we have a cat. We have a real home now."
26. “Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass... Our signalman. She is dying - a bullet hit her heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. She looked: “What a pity, girls.” Then she paused and smiled at us: “Girls, am I really going to die?” At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she screams: “Don’t die! Don't die! You have a letter from home..." Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting... Our Klava sat down next to her, opened the envelope. A letter from mom: "My dear, beloved daughter..." A doctor is standing next to me, he says: " This is a miracle. Miracle!! She lives contrary to all the laws of medicine..." They finished reading the letter... And only then Anya closed her eyes..."
27. “I stayed with him one day, the second and decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’ll stay here with you.” He went to the authorities, but I’m not breathing: well, how can they say that she won’t be seen for twenty-four hours? This is the front, that’s understandable. And suddenly I see the authorities coming into the dugout: Major, Colonel. Everyone shook hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, had a drink, and everyone said their word that the wife found her husband in the trench, this is a real wife, this is such a woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life... What else do I have left? I went with him on reconnaissance, I saw - I fell, killed or wounded. the mortar hits, and the commander shouts: “Where are you going, damn woman!!”
“Two years ago, our chief of staff Ivan Mikhailovich Grinko visited me. He has been retired for a long time. He sat at the same table. I also baked pies. She and her husband are talking, reminiscing... They started talking about our girls... And I started to roar: “Honor, say, respect. And the girls are almost all single. Unmarried. They live in communal apartments. Who took pity on them? Defended? Where did you all go after the war? Traitors!!” In a word, I ruined their festive mood... The chief of staff was sitting in your place. “Show me,” he banged his fist on the table, “who offended you.” Just show it to me!” He asked for forgiveness: “Valya, I can’t tell you anything except tears.”
28. “I reached Berlin with the army... I returned to my village with two orders of Glory and medals. I lived for three days, and on the fourth my mother lifted me out of bed and said: “Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men... “Don’t touch my soul. Write, like others, about my awards...”
29. “At Stalingrad... I’m dragging two wounded people. I’ll drag one and leave one, then the other. And so I pull them one by one, because the wounded are very seriously, they can’t be left, both, as it’s easier to explain, have their legs cut high , they are bleeding. Minutes are precious here, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I discovered that I was dragging one of our tankers and one German... I was terrified: our people were dying there, and I’m saving a German. I was in a panic... There, in the smoke, I couldn’t figure it out... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming... Ah-ah... They are both burnt, black. I saw: someone else’s medallion, someone else’s watch, this cursed uniform. And now I’m dragging our wounded man and thinking: “Should I go back for the German?” I understood that if I left him, he would soon die from the loss. blood... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag them both... This is Stalingrad... The most terrible battles, my diamond... There cannot be one heart for hatred, and the other for. love. A person has only one."
“The war ended, they found themselves terribly unprotected. Here's my wife. She is a smart woman, and she doesn't like military girls. He believes that they were going to war to find suitors, that they were all having affairs there. Although in fact, we are having a sincere conversation, most often these were honest girls. Clean. But after the war... After the dirt, after the lice, after the deaths... I wanted something beautiful. Bright. Beautiful women... I had a friend, one beautiful girl, as I now understand, loved him at the front. Nurse. But he didn’t marry her, he was demobilized and found himself another, prettier one. And he is unhappy with his wife. Now he remembers that one, his military love, she would have been his friend. And after the front, he didn’t want to marry her, because for four years he saw her only in worn-out boots and a man’s quilted jacket. We tried to forget the war. And they forgot their girls too..."
30. “My friend... I won’t give her last name, in case she gets offended... Military paramedic... Wounded three times. The war ended, she entered medical school. She didn’t find any of her relatives, they all died. She was in terrible poverty, washed at night entrances to feed herself. But she didn’t admit to anyone that she was a war veteran and had benefits, she tore up all the documents. I asked: “Why did you tear them up?” She cries: “Who would marry me?” I say, I did the right thing." She cries even louder: "I could use these pieces of paper now. I'm seriously ill." Can you imagine? She's crying."
On the right, in the bottom row, my grandfather is Leonid Petrovich Beloglazov. Senior lieutenant, who participated in the Great Patriotic War until the last 45 years.
Passed the Volkhov, Leningrad, Kalinin, 1-2-3 Baltic, 1-2 Belorussian fronts.
Participated in the defense of Leningrad; liberation of the cities of Ostrov, Pskov, Novgorod, Riga, Warsaw, Gaudzyants; the capture of the cities of Koeningsberg, Oliva, Gdynia, Danzig, Frankfurt on the Oder, Berlin and many others.
"There are many memories of the war...
Now I can no longer find my way to most of the places where I fought.
I probably remember the most vivid, extraordinary thing that I won’t forget until the end of my days.”
1 -
I studied at school No. 11 from the age of 32-34, from the 4th grade. She was then located on the street. Kuibyshev in the building of the current University. The war of 1941 began...
Most of us (children in grade 10 B) knocked on the thresholds of the Komsomol district committees and military registration and enlistment offices, annoying with requests to send us to the front.
My classmates Vita Rybakov and Leva Lebedev and I were lucky. In October '41 We were asked to write statements at the Oktyabrsky RVC. At that time we lived on the street. Kuznechnaya (Sini Morozova) No. 169, pile. 4 (nowadays there is a school on this site).
We were sent to the artillery school in Sukhoi Log. At that time, the school was evacuated there from Odessa (O.A.U)
Everything at the school was unusual: the soldier’s uniform with black buttonholes, the discipline and the classes themselves at the classroom training grounds and in the field.
Officers and soldiers came from the front and from hospitals who had already smelled German gunpowder.
We were somewhat distrustful of their stories about the defeats of our army:
“What success can there be at the front when we are not there...”
On February 23, 1942, we took the oath. Here at the school I joined the Komsomol. They gave me a Komsomol card - cardboard pieces without a photo, but with a stamp.
All three of us (me, Victor, Lenya) graduated around June with the rank of lieutenants.
Our entire graduating class was lined up on the parade ground and the order of appointment was read out. Victor was heading to Moscow, Lebedev and I were heading to the Volkhov Front. Looking ahead, I will say that less than half of us returned home after the war.
Viktor Rybakov was already on the Berlin route at the age of 45. my right arm was torn off. He returned crippled and in 70. died.
Lebedev's fate is still unknown to me.
During the war, I was lucky enough to go through the Volkhov, Leningrad, Kalinin, 1-2-3 Baltic, 1-2 Belorussian fronts.
I took part in the defense of Leningrad; liberation of the cities of Ostrov, Pskov, Novgorod, Riga, Warsaw, Gaudzyants; the capture of the cities of Koeningsberg, Oliva, Gdynia, Danzig, Frankfurt on the Oder, Berlin and many others.
During the war, I fought as a platoon commander for the control of artillery batteries. All the time he was either at the OP or in the front trenches. We were practically not on the defensive, but on the offensive. And our brigade belonged to the RGK and was called the breakthrough brigade. I don’t remember everyone anymore, but a lot of our brothers died.
I myself was shell-shocked (a heavy shell exploded under my feet) and wounded.
The injury occurred on March 27, 1944. under the village Wolves (near Pskov) on the banks of the Malaya Lobyanka river.
I got a piece of wool from a sheepskin coat with a fragment from a mine. The wound was healed and it soon opened. Only in January '46. I had surgery at VOSHITO after demobilization.
The only classmate I had the chance to meet at the front was Sokolkin. We met him on a sunny autumn day in the forest near Novgorod.
Subsequently, I visited him in the dugout more than once. We sat on our bunks and remembered our comrades and girls. He was an ordinary soldier-radio operator.
A soldier's life is not constant, especially during war. Soon we parted - we were transferred to another sector of the front……….. He did not return from the war…
One of our classmates later said that he shot himself. His station burned down and he was afraid of responsibility. At that time he was 19 years old. It was tall. Slender, dark-haired, silent and very honest guy.
2 -
There are many memories of the war...
Now they are retained in my memory, neither connected with a place nor with a time - like separate pictures of the distant past.
Now I can no longer find my way to most of the places where I fought.
I probably remember the most vivid, extraordinary thing that I will not forget until the end of my days.
Here is the village. Tortolovo (Volkhov Front). Summer. Heat. I'm thirsty. I crawl through the reeds to the river. There is a battle going on. The brown water of the swamp river reflects the sultry sky. I greedily drink warm water, scooping it up with my helmet and feeling my stomach swell more and more.
And when I crawled back, 2 meters from where I was drinking, I saw the corpse of a German. He was not killed today... Apparently he was also crawling to drink water. I feel nauseous and vomiting..
And Tuesday, after the battle in winter, our tired brigade settled down in a pine forest to rest. The camp kitchens gave everyone hot millet porridge in their pots. We are eating...and suddenly...the Germans come out of the forest...
They march in full German uniform in formation of two, but each of them has a red cloth strip glued to his cap (disguising it as our landscapes). Schmeisser machine guns on the chest. They were clearly counting on Russian carelessness. They walk clearly, boldly, impudently, right through our location. Gone. Nobody stopped them.
My conscience still torments me - after all, I was sure that these were Germans and not partisans. Why didn’t I then jump forward and shout: “Halt!”?
...And then I still think that I would have received the first bullet, and the Germans would have fled unharmed - we were completely unprepared to receive these “guests.”
But my conscience still torments me.
But September 10, 42. The German began artillery preparation at 4 o'clock in the morning. Everything is boiling like in a cauldron. We close our ears in horror.
Behind the bandages are corpses, horses with loose intestines. You can't stick your nose out. One salvation is roll-ups. Earth is falling from the ceiling, everything is shaking, as if during an earthquake. Has diarrhea. We put on our helmets and throw them out the door... The Germans are advancing... It's stuffy...
Some people can’t stand it...jump out of the dugout and run into the swamp. Parashchenko also jumped out with a light machine gun...
I was the last to run out - I wasn’t as scared as the others - I just didn’t understand - this was the first time this had happened to me...
I also ran where everyone else was running. But there was no one there anymore. Suddenly, among the wild rosemary, I came across Parashchenko. He was lying on his back. Next to him was his Degtyarev light machine gun.
Running past, I noticed his eyes glazing over...
This was the first soldier in my platoon to die.
But the hillock... Our SU-100 guns. It’s also summer, or rather autumn. The battle has just ended. The SU-100s are still burning. Our tankers are hanging from their hatches. The padded jackets on them are smoking...
We look around, and every moment we are ready to meet the enemy...etc. etc.
3 -
Kirghish
There is a thrice-cursed place on the river. Volkhov - station and city "Kirgishi"
There is still a dead forest there in the swamp, without a single leaf. You can see it when you drive along the railway. from Moscow to Leningrad. It is dry because its trunks are riddled with bullets and shrapnel.
Until now, local residents are afraid of mines when going for mushrooms. And they still dig up a rusted machine gun, a rifle, a helmet, or the bones of an unknown soldier in their gardens.
A small bridgehead on the river. Volkhov near Kirgish in 42 was fired upon by 2 armies (I think 4 and 58)
There were very heavy bloody battles, called local battles. The armies suffered colossal losses, but did not give up their positions.
In the summer, for many kilometers the wind carried the sweet smell of rotting corpses. In the swampy no man's land there were tanks sucked into the ground, and from the towers of these tanks there was something like a winter slide (which is made for children to ride) only not made of snow, but of corpses.
It was the wounded (ours and the Germans) who crawled, seeking protection from the knocked-out armored monsters, and died there.
Kirghishi was a real hell.
There was even a fable at the front: “Whoever has not been near Kirgish has not seen the war.”
There was a grove there on the German side.
We gave her the code name "Elephant". It seems that on the map it very vaguely resembled an elephant.
I have a very unpleasant memory associated with this grove. These two armies could not take it. And it apparently had great tactical significance. I ended up near Kirgishi after my ordeal in the 5th reserve regiment as a completely “yellow-faced” lieutenant.
One day the commissioner called me to his office.
He said: “You are a Komsomol member. Your soldiers, one and all, signed up as volunteers to take the Elephant Grove. It’s a shame for the commander to lag behind his soldiers.” And I replied: “Write me too.”
And then, as I found out, he called one soldier from my platoon and said to each: “Your commander is young, he is only 19 years old, but he is a Komsomol member. He signed up as a volunteer to take the Elephant Grove. What about you? It’s a shame for soldiers to abandon their commander.” And all my soldiers answered: “Well, write”
I still don’t understand why it was necessary to deceive us like that?...At that time we were all the same and would have gone the same way...
The offensive was scheduled for the next day.
All of us volunteers were taken to the edge of the forest. Ahead there was a swamp, and behind the swamp there was a high-rise building where the Germans and the ill-fated Elephant Grove were sitting.
We waited until 12 o'clock for our artillery preparation. They didn't wait.
The enemy occasionally fired shells at us, but in the swamp this was of little effect. The shell went deep into the peat and exploded there without producing fragments - the result was a camouflage.
At about one o'clock in the afternoon we were picked up in chains and led silently into the attack.
It was somewhat similar to the psychic attack in the film Chapaev.
For some reason, at this time I remembered her.
I walked with a rifle at the ready (at that time we had not yet thrown away all the bayonets). I look to the right, I look to the left, and my soul rejoices - a chain is walking, wavering, bristling with bayonets: “Now we will conquer the whole world.”
It wasn't scary at all. On the contrary, I felt some kind of elation, energy, pride. And so they entered the German trenches without firing a single shot - they occupied the heights and the “Elephant” grove.
In the German trenches there were two “Fritz” left to guard the positions, who were playing cards in the dugout, did not notice us, and whom we took prisoner.
The rest went to the bathhouse.
Apparently the Germans did not expect such audacity from the Russians - an attack in broad daylight and without any artillery preparation
I can’t describe what happened when the enemy came to his senses...
We ran from a height, covering the no-man's land with our bodies. There was literally a barrage of shells and mines coming from the sky. From all sides, machine gun fire merged into one common roar. Everyone mixed up. We stopped wondering what was going on, where ours were and where the strangers were.
Only in the morning, along some drainage ditch, almost swimming, covered in swamp slurry, without a rifle or helmet, I, staggering from fatigue in an almost unconscious state, crawled out to my people at the edge of the forest.
Of many, many, I was very lucky - I survived.
The Elephant Grove was never taken. The Germans had it until our troops, with a flanking maneuver, created a threat of encirclement and forced them to retreat. But this happened much later - in the year 43 or even 44.
May 2016
We ask for your prayers for all Victory for the sake of our leaders and warriors who labored, who laid down their lives on the battlefield, who died from wounds and hunger, who were innocently tortured and killed in captivity and bitter labor.
At the beginning of May, active Orthodox residents of Snezhina - our volunteers - congratulated veterans and children of war on the 71st anniversary of the Great Victory and the Day of Remembrance of St. George the Victorious. “Children of war” are those who were children in those terrible years and whose fathers, perhaps even mothers, did not return from the battlefields.
I am glad that this year we were able to visit even more of these wonderful people. Some had been going for the second or third year, while for others it was their first such experience.
It was very interesting to talk with children of war and veterans, listen to their stories about how they lived during the war, what they ate, what they drank, you can see how these people worried about that time. Children of the war spoke with tears in their eyes about that time... Our mission was to convey to them that no one will forget them, we will preserve the memory forever!
The Great Patriotic War is one of the most terrible trials that befell the Russian people. Its severity and bloodshed left a huge imprint on people's minds and had dire consequences for the lives of an entire generation. “Children” and “war” are two incompatible concepts. War breaks and cripples the destinies of children. But the children lived and worked next to the adults, trying to bring victory closer with their hard work... The war claimed millions of lives, destroyed millions of talents, and destroyed millions of human destinies. Nowadays, many people, in particular young people, know little about the history of their country, but witnesses to the events of the Great Patriotic War are becoming fewer and fewer every year, and if their memories are not recorded now, they will simply disappear along with the people, without leaving a well-deserved mark in history... Without knowing the past, it is impossible to comprehend and understand the present.
Here are some stories recorded by our volunteers.
Piskareva Lyubov Sergeevna
Piskareva Lyubov Sergeevna told us that her grandfather, Sergei Pavlovich Baluev, was called to the front on February 28, 1941 from the village of Byngi, Nevyansky district, Sverdlovsk region. He was a private, fought near the Smolensk region. When her mother was 5 months old, he shouted to her grandmother: “Lisa, take care of Lyubka (mother), take care of Lyubka!” “He held my mother in one hand, and in the other hand he wiped away the tears that flowed from him without stopping. Grandma said that he felt that they were not destined to see each other again.” Sergei Pavlovich died in September 1943 in the village of Strigino, Smolensk region, and was buried in a mass grave.
Ivanova Lidiya Alexandrovna told about her father and mother. In May 1941, my father was drafted into the Soviet Army and he served in Murmansk. But on June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began. Germany violated the terms of the non-aggression pact and treacherously attacked our Motherland. My father, along with other soldiers of this military unit, was alerted and sent to the front. Alexander Stepanovich fought on the Karelian front. On July 6, 1941, he already took part in the first battle.
Ivanova Lidiya Alexandrovna
The letters show how hard it was for our soldiers during the war. My father's military unit was in difficult climatic conditions. There were hills all around, we lived in trenches all the time, and didn’t take off our clothes for several months. Due to lack of food, I lost several teeth, because... suffered from scurvy. The letter contains the following words: “I am writing a letter, and bullets are whistling overhead, and I chose a moment to announce myself.”
For a long time, Lidia Alexandrovna did not know where her father was fighting, whether he was alive, and he also knew nothing about his family. From the newspapers, Alexander Stepanovich learned that the Smolensk region, where his family lived, was occupied by the Germans, so the letters did not arrive. Contact with his family was restored only in 1943.
In February 1945, my father wrote that he was in Poland, that he had to go through many difficulties, and really hoped that they would soon cross the border with Germany. But apparently it was not destined to happen. On March 23, 1945, Guard Senior Sergeant Alexander Stepanovich Nikolaev died faithful to his oath, showing heroism and courage. Later, Lidiya Aleksandrovna and her mother learned that in his last battle, under fire, he restored 15 meters of the telephone line, while shooting 5 Germans. He did not live to see the Great Victory by only 1.5 months.
Alexander Stepanovich was awarded the medal "For Courage". Mother was a home front worker all this time.
Dubovkina Valentina Vasilievna
Memorized for the rest of my life Dubovkina Valentina Vasilievna(although she was only 3 years old at the time) the moment when her mother was brought a funeral for her father. “Mom was then overcome with grief from the loss of her beloved husband.”
War and post-war life was difficult, you had to work a lot and even beg for alms. And this sweet little woman has been a hard worker all her life, and now, at 76 years old, she grows vegetables, fruits, and flowers in her garden, and pleases her grandchildren and great-grandson with homemade baked goods. She is great, despite her difficult life and losses, she remained very cheerful, full of optimism and hope for a bright future!
Our volunteer Lyudmila had a very warm impression. “They were waiting for me and prepared a treat for tea. We had a nice chat."
Kozhevnikova Valentina Grigorievna was born in the Smolensk region, the family had three children, she and two more sisters. At the age of 15 I already went to work. In 1943, Valentina Grigorievna’s family received the last letter from her father, in which it was written: “We are going into battle,” and a month later a funeral arrived. My father was blown up by a mine.
Kozhevnikova Valentina Grigorievna
Lobazhevich Valentina Vasilievna
Lobazhevich Valentina Vasilievna I was a child during the war. According to volunteer Yulia: “This is an amazing person! Although our meeting was short, it was, however, very meaningful. We learned that when her father was called to the front, her mother had five of them! How courageously they endured the difficulties of war and post-war life. I was surprised and pleased that a person has such a kind and open heart! It seemed to me that she came to visit us and gave us various gifts! God bless her and her loved ones!”
Volunteer Anna with her daughter Veronica: “We visited Ivanushkina Svetlana Alexandrovna And Kamenev Ivan Alekseevich. It was nice to see their happy eyes, full of gratitude!”
Wonderful person - Domanina Muza Alexandrovna, last year she turned 90 years old. Muza Alexandrovna continues to write poems about her family and friends, about the Ural nature, about Orthodox and secular holidays. Her works are varied, like Muza Alexandrovna’s whole life: they contain warmth and kindness, anxiety and sadness, faith and patriotism, romance and humor, ... Muza Alexandrovna grew up in a large family in Kasli. Life was both hungry and difficult. From the very first days, 15-year-old Muse, together with other boys and girls, had to meet the wounded from the train and deliver them to the hospital. In any weather, in winter on horses and in summer on boats, they were transported across Lake Sungul. In February 1942, the family received notice of the death of their father. Lines written in 2011:
We have suffered quite a bit of grief,
And the hunger was enough to bring everyone to tears.
Water with salt - replaced lard,
There was no time for sweet dreams.
We have endured everything, we have endured everything,
And torn scarves were not a reproach to us.
We are the children of war, peace, labor,
We haven't forgotten our fathers yet!
Despite the fact that Muza Alexandrovna no longer leaves the house for health reasons, she does not despair! And every time meeting her leaves bright and touching memories in my soul.
Among our dear veterans and children of war, there are quite a few whose lives are limited by “four walls,” but it is surprising how much love of life and optimism they have, the desire to learn something new, to be useful to their relatives, they read books, write memoirs, perform feasible housework. It turns out to be very difficult to find the rest at home: they go to gardens, help raise their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, take an active part in the life of the city... And, of course, at the Victory Parade they march at the head of the column of the Immortal Regiment, carrying portraits of their unreturned fathers...
On the eve of Victory Day, a note was published in the Snezhinskaya newspaper “Metro” Balashova Zoya Dmitrievna. In it, Zoya Dmitrievna talks about her fate, how during those war years their father “disappeared,” and their mother raised four daughters alone. On behalf of the organization “Memory of the Heart,” created in our city by “children of war,” Zoya Dmitrievna addresses the younger generation: “ Friends, be worthy of those who died defending our Motherland. Be attentive to the older generation, to your parents, do not forget them, help them, do not spare the warmth of your heart for them. They need it so much!».
Non-random dates:
People of different generations must remember that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers defended our freedom at the cost of their lives.
We know, we remember! We are immensely proud.
Your feat cannot be forgotten for centuries.
Thank you very much for your strength and faith,
For our freedom on your shoulders.
For clear skies, native spaces,
For joy and pride in hearts and souls.
May you live long, may God give you health.
Let the memory of the victorious spring live on.
Happy Holidays, dear friends! Happy Great Victory!
We hope that this good tradition will attract more volunteers from year to year, especially boys and girls, young parents with children. After all, the children of our time are our future!
Kristina Klishchenko
My grandfather was the captain of a motorized rifle regiment. It was 1942, the Germans besieged Leningrad. Hunger, disease and death. The only way to deliver supplies to Leningrad is the “road of life” - frozen Lake Ladoga. Late at night, a column of trucks with flour and medicine, led by my grandfather, headed along the road of life. Of the 35 cars, only 3 made it to Leningrad, the rest went under the ice, like my grandfather’s truck. He carried the saved sack of flour to the city on foot for 6 km, but did not make it - he was frozen because of his wet clothes at -30.
My grandmother’s friend’s father died in the war when she was not even a year old. When the soldiers began to return from the war, every day she put on her most beautiful dress and went to the station to meet the trains. The girl said that she was going to look for her dad. She ran among the crowd, approached the soldiers, and asked: “Will you be my dad?” One man took her hand, said: “well, lead the way,” and she brought him home and with her mother and brothers they lived a long and happy life.
My great-grandmother was 12 years old when the siege of Leningrad began, where she lived. She studied at a music school and played the piano. She fiercely defended her instrument and did not allow it to be dismantled for firewood. When the shelling began, and there was no time to go to the bomb shelter, she would sit down and play, loudly, for the whole house to hear. People listened to her music and were not distracted by gunfire. My grandmother, mother and I play the piano. When I was too lazy to play, I remembered my great-grandmother and sat down at the instrument.
My grandfather was a border guard; in the summer of 1941 he served somewhere on the border with what is now Moldova, and accordingly, he began to fight from the very first days. He never really talked about the war, because the border troops were part of the NKVD department - it was impossible to tell anything. But we did hear one story. During the forced breakthrough of the Nazis to Baku, my grandfather’s platoon was thrown to the rear of the Germans. The guys quickly found themselves surrounded in the mountains. They had to get out within 2 weeks, only a few survived, including the grandfather. The soldiers came to our front exhausted and mad with hunger. The orderly ran to the village and got a bag of potatoes and several loaves of bread. The potatoes were boiled and the hungry soldiers greedily attacked the food. My grandfather, who survived the famine of 1933 as a child, tried to stop his colleagues as best he could. He himself ate a crust of bread and some potato peelings. An hour and a half later, all of my grandfather’s colleagues who had gone through the hell of encirclement, including the platoon commander and the unfortunate orderly, died in terrible agony from volvulus. Only the grandfather survived. He went through the entire war, was wounded twice and died in 87 from a cerebral hemorrhage - he bent down to fold the cot on which he slept in the hospital, because he wanted to run away and look at his newborn granddaughter, and then at me.
During the war, my grandmother was very young, she lived with her older brother and mother, her father left before the girl was born. There was a terrible famine, and the great-grandmother became too weak; she lay on the stove for many days and was slowly dying. She was saved by her sister, who had previously lived far away. She soaked some bread in a drop of milk and gave it to her grandmother to chew. Little by little my sister came out. So my grandparents were not left orphans. And grandfather, a smart guy, began to hunt gophers in order to somehow feed his family. He took a couple of buckets of water, went to the steppe, and poured water into the gopher holes until the frightened animal jumped out. The grandfather grabbed him and killed him instantly so that he would not run away. He dragged home as many as he found, and they were fried, and the grandmother says that it was a real feast, and his brother’s spoils helped them survive. Grandfather is no longer alive, but grandmother lives and waits for her many grandchildren to visit every summer. She cooks perfectly, a lot, generously, and she herself takes a piece of bread with a tomato and eats it after everyone else. So I got used to eating little by little, simply and irregularly. And he feeds his family to the fullest. Thanks to her. She experienced something that makes the heart freeze, and raised a large, glorious family.
My great-grandfather was drafted in 1942. He went through the war, was wounded, and returned as a Hero of the Soviet Union. On his way home after the end of the war, he stood at the station, where a train full of children of different ages arrived. There were also greeters - parents. Only there were only a few parents, and many times more children. Almost all of them were orphans. They got off the train and, not finding their mom and dad, started crying. My great-grandfather cried with them. The first and only time during the entire war.
My great-grandfather went to the front in one of the first departures from our city. My great-grandmother was pregnant with her second child - my grandmother. In one of his letters, he indicated that he was walking in a circle through our city (by that time my grandmother was born). A neighbor, who was 14 years old at that time, found out about this, she took the 3-month-old grandmother and took her to show my great-grandfather, he cried with happiness at the moment when he held her in his arms. It was 1941. He never saw her again. He died on May 6, 1945 in Berlin and was buried there.
My grandfather, a 10-year-old boy, was vacationing in a children's camp in June 1941. The shift was until July 1, on June 22 they were not told anything, they were not sent home, and so the children were given another 9 days of peaceful childhood. All radios were removed from the camp, no news. This is also courage, as if nothing had happened, to continue the detachment’s activities with the children. I can imagine how the counselors cried at night and whispered news to each other.
My great-grandfather went through two wars. During the First World War he was an ordinary soldier, after the war he went to receive military education. I learned. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in two significant and large-scale battles. At the end of the war he commanded a division. There were injuries, but he returned back to the front line. Many awards and thanks. The worst thing is that he was killed not by enemies of the country and people, but by simple hooligans who wanted to steal his awards.
Today my husband and I finished watching The Young Guard. I sit on the balcony, look at the stars, listen to the nightingales. How many young boys and girls never lived to see victory. We never saw life. My husband and daughter are sleeping in the room. What a blessing it is to know that your loved ones are at home! Today is May 9, 2016. The main holiday of the peoples of the former USSR. We live as free people thanks to those who lived during the war. Who was at the front and in the rear. God forbid we never find out what it was like for our grandfathers.
My grandfather lived in a village, so he had a dog. When the war began, his father was sent to the front, and his mother, two sisters and he were left alone. Due to severe hunger, they wanted to kill the dog and eat it. Grandfather, when he was little, untied the dog from the kennel and let him run, for which he received it from his mother (my great-grandmother). In the evening of the same day, the dog brought them a dead cat, and then began to drag the bones and bury them, and the grandfather dug them up and carried them home (they cooked soup on these bones). We lived like this until we were 43, thanks to the dog, and then she simply didn’t return home.
The most memorable story from my grandmother was about her work in a military hospital. When their Nazis died, they couldn’t get them and the girls out of the rooms from the second floor to the corpse truck... they simply threw the corpses out of the window. Subsequently, they were court-martialed for this.
A neighbor, a WWII veteran, spent the entire war in the infantry until Berlin. One morning we were smoking near the entrance and started talking. He was struck by the phrase - in the movies they show about the war - soldiers are running - they shout hurray at the top of their lungs... - this is fantasy. We, he says, always went on the attack in silence, because it was scary as fuck.
During the war, my great-grandmother worked in a shoe workshop, she was caught in a blockade, and in order to somehow feed her family she stole laces, at that time they were made from pigskin, she brought them home, cut them into small pieces equally, and fried them, so and survived.
Grandmother was born in 1940, and the war left her an orphan. A great-grandmother drowned in a well while collecting rose hips for her daughter. Great-grandfather went through the entire war and reached Berlin. He died when he was blown up by an abandoned mine while returning home. All that was left of him was his memory and the Order of the Red Star. My grandmother kept it for over thirty years until it was stolen (she knew who, but couldn’t prove it). I still can’t understand how people raised their hand. I know these people; I studied in the same class with their great-granddaughter and were friends. How interesting life has turned out.
When he was little, he often sat on his grandfather's lap. He had a scar on his wrist, which I touched and examined. These were teeth marks. Years later, my father told the story of the scar. My grandfather, a veteran, went into reconnaissance; in the Smolensk region they encountered the SS men. After close combat, only one of the enemies remained alive. He was huge and swearing. SS-man, in a rage, bit his grandfather's wrist to the meat, but was broken and captured. Grandfather and the company were presented with another award.
My great-grandfather has been gray-haired since he was 19 years old. As soon as the war began, he was immediately drafted without being allowed to finish his studies. He said that they were going at the Germans, but it didn’t work out as they wanted, the Germans were ahead. Everyone was shot, and grandfather decided to hide under the trolley. They sent a German shepherd to sniff everything, grandfather thought that they would see everything and kill it. But no, the dog simply sniffed it and licked it while running away. That's why we have 3 shepherd dogs at home)
My grandmother was 13 years old when she was wounded in the back by shrapnel during a bombing. There were no doctors in the village - everyone was on the battlefield. When the Germans entered the village, their military doctor, having learned about the girl who could no longer walk or sit, secretly made his way into her grandmother’s house at night, made bandages, and picked out worms from the wound (it was hot, there were a lot of flies). To distract the girl, the guy asked: “Zoinka, sing Katusha.” And she cried and sang. The war passed, my grandmother survived, but all her life she remembered the guy thanks to whom she remained alive.
My grandmother told me that during the war, my great-great-grandmother worked at a factory; at that time they made sure that no one stole and were very harshly punished for it. And in order to somehow feed their children, women put on two pairs of tights and stuffed grain between them. Or, for example, one distracts the guards while the children are taken to the workshop where the butter is churned, they catch small pieces and feed them. All three of my great-great-grandmother's children survived that period, and her son no longer eats butter.
My great-grandmother was 16 when German troops arrived in Belarus. They were examined by doctors to be sent to the camps to work. Then the girls smeared themselves with grass, which caused a rash similar to smallpox. When the doctor examined the great-grandmother, he realized that she was healthy, but he told the soldiers that she was sick, and the Germans were terribly afraid of such people. As a result, this German doctor saved many people. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be in the world.
Great-grandfather never shared stories about the war with his family. He went through it from beginning to end, was shell-shocked, but never talked about those terrible times. Now he is 90 and more and more often he remembers that terrible life. He doesn’t remember the names of his relatives, but he remembers where and how Leningrad was shelled. And he still has old habits. There is always huge quantities of food in the house, but what if there is hunger? The doors are locked with several locks - for peace of mind. And there are 3 blankets in the bed, although the house is warm. Watches films about war with an indifferent look..
My great-grandfather fought near Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). And during one of the shootouts, shrapnel hit his eyes, causing him to instantly go blind. As soon as the shots stopped being heard, I began to look for the voice of the sergeant major whose leg had been blown off. The grandfather found the foreman and took him in his arms. So they went. The blind grandfather followed the commands of the one-legged foreman. Both survived. My grandfather even saw me after the operations.
When the war began, my grandfather was 17 years old, and according to the law of war, he had to arrive at the military registration and enlistment office on the day of his majority to be sent to the active army. But it turned out that when he received the summons, he and his mother moved, and he did not receive the summons. He came to the military registration and enlistment office the next day, for a day of delay he was sent to a penal battalion, and their squad was sent to Leningrad, it was cannon fodder, those whom you don’t mind sending into battle first without weapons. As an 18-year-old boy, he found himself in hell, but he went through the entire war, was never wounded, the only thing his relatives did not know was whether he was alive or not, there was no right of correspondence. He reached Berlin and returned home a year after the war, since he still served in active service. His own mother, having met him on the street, did not recognize him 5.5 years later, and fainted when he called her mom. And he cried like a boy, saying “Mom, it’s me Vanya, your Vanya”
At the age of 16, my great-grandfather, in May 1941, having added 2 years to himself to get a job, got a job in the Ukraine in Krivoy Rog at a mine. In June, when the war began, he was mobilized into the army. Their company was immediately surrounded and captured. They were forced to dig a ditch, where they were shot and covered with earth. The great-grandfather woke up, realized that he was alive, crawled upstairs, shouting “Is anyone alive?” Two responded. Three got out, crawled to some village, where a woman found them and hid them in her cellar. During the day they hid, and at night they worked in her field, harvesting corn. But one neighbor saw them and handed them over to the Germans. They came for them and took them captive. This is how my great-grandfather ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After some time, due to the fact that his great-grandfather was a young, healthy peasant guy, from this camp he was transported to a concentration camp in West Germany, where he worked in the fields of the local rich, and then as a civilian. In 1945, during a bombing, he was locked in one house, where he sat the whole day until the American allies entered the city. When he came out, he saw that all the buildings in the area were destroyed, only the house where he was was left intact. The Americans offered all the prisoners to go to America, some agreed, and the great-grandfather and the rest decided to return to their homeland. They returned on foot to the USSR for 3 months, passing through all of Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine. In the USSR, their military had already taken them prisoner and wanted to shoot them as traitors to the Motherland, but then the war with Japan began and they were sent there to fight. So my great-grandfather fought in the Japanese War and returned home after it ended in 1949. I can say with confidence that my great-grandfather was born wearing a shirt. He escaped death three times and went through two wars.
The grandmother said that her father served in the war, saved the commander, carried him on his back through the entire forest, listened to his heartbeat, when he brought him, he saw that the commander’s entire back was like a sieve, but he only heard his own heart.
I have been doing search work for several years. Groups of searchers searched for unmarked graves in forests, swamps, and battlefields. I still can’t forget this feeling of happiness if there were medallions among the remains. In addition to personal data, many soldiers put notes in the medallions. Some were written literally moments before death. I still remember, word for word, a line from one such letter: “Mom, tell Slavka and Mitya to crush the Germans! I can’t live anymore, so let them try for three.”
My great-grandfather spent his entire life telling his grandson stories about how afraid he was during the war. How I was afraid, sitting in a tank together with a younger comrade, to go at 3 German tanks and destroy them all. How afraid I was to crawl across the field under plane fire in order to restore contact with the command. How afraid I was to lead a detachment of very young guys in order to blow up a German bunker. He said: “Horror lived in me for 5 terrible years. Every moment I was afraid for my life, for the lives of my children, for the life of my Motherland. Whoever says that he was not afraid would be lying.” This is how my great-grandfather went through the entire war, living in constant fear. Afraid, I reached Berlin. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and, despite his experiences, remained a wonderful, incredibly kind and sympathetic person.
Great-grandfather was, one might say, a supply manager in his unit. Somehow we were transported in a convoy of cars to a new place and found ourselves surrounded by Germans. There is nowhere to run, only the river. So the grandfather grabbed the porridge pot from the car and, holding on to it, swam to the other shore. No one else from his unit survived.
During the years of war and famine, my great-grandmother briefly went outside to buy bread. And she left her daughter (my grandmother) at home alone. She was at most five years old at the time. So, if the great-grandmother had not returned a few minutes earlier, her child could have been eaten by the neighbors.
We have collected for you the best stories about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Stories from the first person, not made up, living memories of front-line soldiers and witnesses of the war.
I was not always old and frail, I lived in a 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, and they didn’t give us any 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 exposed her arm and showed me a tattoo of a row of numbers on the inside of her arm, 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 itself 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 served in Germany, but as an officer. Once on the street of one city a young German called out to him. He ran up to my father, grabbed his hand and asked:
Don't you recognize me? Yes, of course, now it’s hard to recognize that hungry, ragged boy in me. But I remember you, how you fed us then among the ruins. Believe me, we will never forget this.
This is how we made friends in the West, by force of arms and the all-conquering power of Christian love.
Alive. We'll endure it. We will win.
THE TRUTH ABOUT WAR
It should be noted that not everyone was convincingly impressed by V. M. Molotov’s speech on the first day of the war, and the final phrase caused irony among some soldiers. When we, doctors, asked them how things were at the front, and we lived only for this, we often heard the answer: “We are scuttling. Victory is ours... that is, the Germans!”
I can’t say that J.V. Stalin’s speech had a positive effect on everyone, although the majority felt warm from it. But in the darkness of a long line for water in the basement of the house where the Yakovlevs lived, I once heard: “Here! They became brothers and sisters! I forgot how I went to jail for being late. The rat squeaked when the tail was pressed!” The people were silent at the same time. I have heard similar statements more than once.
Two other factors contributed to the rise of patriotism. Firstly, these are the atrocities of the fascists on our territory. Newspaper reports that in Katyn near Smolensk the Germans shot tens of thousands of Poles we captured, and that it was not us during the retreat, as the Germans assured, that were perceived without malice. Anything could have happened. “We couldn’t leave them to the Germans,” some reasoned. But the population could not forgive the murder of our people.
In February 1942, my senior operating nurse A.P. Pavlova received a letter from the liberated banks of Seliger, 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. The Orthodox Church showed true patriotism in its preparations for the war, 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 at how you 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. The central heating began to work better, the electric light became almost constant, and water appeared in the water supply. We went to the cinema. 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 Rybatskoye and Murzinka, but received a fair strip of land in the garden near the Winter Palace, which was given to our hospital. It was excellent land. Other Leningraders cultivated other gardens, squares, and the Field of Mars. We even planted about two dozen potato eyes with an adjacent piece of husk, as well as cabbage, rutabaga, carrots, onion seedlings, and especially a lot of turnips. They planted them wherever there was a piece of land.
 |
The wife, fearing a lack of protein food, collected slugs from vegetables and pickled them in two large jars. However, they were not useful, and in the spring of 1943 they were thrown away.
The ensuing winter of 1942/43 was mild. Transport no longer stopped; all wooden houses on the outskirts of Leningrad, including houses in Murzinka, were demolished for fuel and stocked up for the winter. There was electric light in the rooms. Soon the scientists were given special letter rations. As a candidate of science, I was given a group B ration. It included monthly 2 kg of sugar, 2 kg of cereal, 2 kg of meat, 2 kg of flour, 0.5 kg of butter and 10 packs of Belomorkanal cigarettes. It was luxurious and it saved us.
My fainting stopped. I even easily stayed on duty all night with my wife, guarding the vegetable garden near the Winter Palace in turns, three times during the summer. However, despite the security, every single head of cabbage was stolen.
Art was of great importance. We began to read more, go to the cinema more often, watch film programs in the hospital, go to amateur concerts and artists who came to us. Once my wife and I were at a concert of D. Oistrakh and L. Oborin who came to Leningrad. When D. Oistrakh played and L. Oborin accompanied, it was a little cold in the hall. Suddenly a voice said quietly: “Air raid, air alert! Those who wish can go down to the bomb shelter!” In the crowded hall, no one moved, Oistrakh smiled gratefully and understandingly at us all with one eye and continued to play, without stumbling for a moment. Although the explosions shook my feet 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 in the bakery. I started shaking and felt very dizzy. “You are beasts, beasts,” I wheezed and, staggering, went out into the cold. I couldn't save the child. A slight push would have been enough, and the angry people would certainly have mistaken me for an accomplice, and I would have fallen.
Yes, I'm a layman. I didn't rush to save this boy. “Don’t turn into a werewolf, a beast,” our beloved Olga Berggolts wrote these days. Wonderful woman! She helped many to endure the blockade and preserved the necessary humanity in us.
On their behalf I will send a telegram abroad:
“Alive. We'll endure it. We will win."
But my unwillingness to share the fate of a beaten child forever remained a notch on my conscience...
 |
The second incident happened later. We had just received, but for the second time, a standard ration and my wife and I carried it along Liteiny, heading home. The snowdrifts were quite high in the second winter of the blockade. Almost opposite the house of N.A. Nekrasov, from where he admired the front entrance, clinging to the lattice immersed in the snow, a child of four or five years old was walking. He could hardly move his legs, his huge eyes on his withered old face peered with horror at the world around him. 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 restoration of the country, the second front, that is, about the active inclusion of the allies in the war. However, there was little hope for allies. “The plan has already been drawn up, but there are no Roosevelts,” the Leningraders joked. They also remembered the Indian wisdom: “I have three friends: the first is my friend, the second is the friend of my friend and the third is the enemy of my enemy.” Everyone believed that the third degree of friendship was the only thing that united us with our allies. (This is how it turned out, by the way: the second front appeared only when it became clear that we could liberate all of Europe alone.)
Rarely did anyone talk about other outcomes. There were people who believed that Leningrad should become a free city after the war. But everyone immediately cut them off, remembering “Window to Europe”, and “The Bronze Horseman”, and the historical significance for Russia of access to the Baltic Sea. But they talked about breaking the blockade every day and everywhere: at work, on duty on the roofs, when they were “fighting off airplanes with shovels,” extinguishing lighters, while eating meager food, going to bed in a cold bed, and during unwise self-care in those days. We waited and hoped. Long and hard. They talked about Fedyuninsky and his mustache, then about Kulik, then about Meretskov.
The draft commissions took almost everyone to the front. I was sent there from the hospital. I remember that I gave liberation to only the two-armed man, being surprised at the wonderful prosthetics that hid his handicap. “Don’t be afraid, take those with stomach ulcers or tuberculosis. After all, they will all have to be at the front for no more than a week. If they don’t kill them, they will wound them, and they will end up in the hospital,” the military commissar of the Dzerzhinsky district told us.
And indeed, the war involved a lot of blood. When trying to get in touch with the mainland, piles of bodies were left under Krasny Bor, especially along the embankments. “Nevsky Piglet” and Sinyavinsky swamps never left the lips. Leningraders fought furiously. Everyone knew that behind his back his own family was dying of hunger. But all attempts to break the blockade did not lead to success; only our hospitals were filled with the crippled and dying.
With horror we learned about the death of an entire army and Vlasov’s betrayal. I had to believe this. After all, when they read to us about Pavlov and other executed generals 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 the mainland. But we didn’t wander around the empty hospital for long after the bustle of unloading it. Fresh wounded came in a stream straight from the positions, dirty, often bandaged in individual bags over their overcoats, and bleeding. We were a medical battalion, a field hospital, and a front-line hospital. Some went to the triage, others went to the operating tables for continuous operation. There was no time to eat, and there was no time to eat.
This was not the first time such streams came to us, but this one was too painful and tiring. All the time, a difficult combination of physical work with mental, moral human experiences with the precision of the dry work of a surgeon was required.
On the third day, the men could no longer stand it. They were given 100 grams of diluted alcohol and sent to sleep for three hours, although the emergency room was filled with wounded people in need of urgent operations. Otherwise, they began to operate poorly, half asleep. Well done women! Not only did they endure the hardships of the siege many times better than men, they died much less often from dystrophy, but they also worked without complaining of fatigue and accurately fulfilled their duties.
 |
In our operating room, operations were performed on three tables: at each table there was a doctor and a nurse, and on all three tables there was another nurse, replacing the operating room. Staff operating room and dressing nurses, every one of them, assisted in the operations. The habit of working many nights in a row in Bekhterevka, the hospital named after. On October 25, she helped me out in the ambulance. I passed this test, I can proudly say, as a woman.
On the night of January 18, they brought us a wounded woman. On this day, her husband was killed, and she was seriously wounded in the brain, in the left temporal lobe. A fragment with fragments of bones penetrated into the depths, completely paralyzing both of her right limbs and depriving her of the ability to speak, but while maintaining the understanding of someone else's speech. Women fighters came to us, but not often. I took her to my table, laid her on her right, paralyzed side, numbed her skin and very successfully removed the metal fragment and bone fragments embedded in the brain. “My dear,” I said, finishing the operation and preparing for the next one, “everything will be fine. I took out the fragment, and your speech will return, and the paralysis will completely disappear. You will make a full recovery!”
 |
Suddenly my wounded one with her free hand lying on top began to beckon me to her. I knew that she would not start talking any time soon, and I thought that she would whisper something to me, although it seemed incredible. And suddenly the wounded woman, with her healthy naked but strong hand of a fighter, grabbed my neck, pressed my face to her lips and kissed me deeply. I couldn't stand it. I didn’t sleep for four days, hardly 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 for at least 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.
It 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.
1 year ago on this day, a war began that divided the history of not only our country, but the whole world into to And after. The story is told by Mark Pavlovich Ivanikhin, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Chairman of the Council of War Veterans, Labor Veterans, Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies of the Eastern Administrative District.
– – this is the day when our lives were broken in half. It was a nice, 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 the Kursk Bulge through Ukraine and Poland I 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 do.
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 went into 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 of their fathers 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 of a 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 easy-going.
All the German cities 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
