Memoirs of the participants of the Second World War about the war. Shield of civilians

V.S. Boklagova

On June 22, 1941, a mounted messenger from the Bolshansky village council informed us about the beginning of the war, that fascist Germany attacked our Motherland without declaring war.

On the second day, summons were handed to many young men. The farewell to the whole village began with harmonicas, songs with tears in their eyes. Activists gave orders to the defenders of the motherland. There were also desertions.

The front was getting closer and closer to Chernyanka. All schools were closed, education was interrupted. I completed only six classes, the evacuation of equipment and livestock began to the East, beyond the Don.

My partner Mitrofan and I were instructed to drive 350 heads of collective farm pigs beyond the Don. They saddled the horses, picked up a bag of food and drove the Volotovo grader, caught up with the village of Volotovo, an order was received to hand over the pigs to the village council, and return home ourselves.

The retreat of our troops along the Bolshansky Way and the Volotovsky grader began, our soldiers were exhausted, half-starved with one rifle for three.

In July 1942, the Nazis occupied our village. Tanks, artillery, infantry were moving to the East in an avalanche, pursuing our troops.

An occupation

I will remember the Nazi troops for the rest of my life.

The Nazis spared no one and nothing: they robbed the population, took away livestock and poultry, and did not disdain even the personal belongings of our youth. They went around the yards of residents, shooting poultry.

They cut down trees, pear apple trees to disguise their vehicles, forced the population to dig trenches for their soldiers.

The Nazis took away blankets, honey, chickens and pigeons from our family, knocked out The Cherry Orchard and plums.

The Germans with their cars trampled potatoes in the gardens, destroyed the beds in the subsidiary plots.

The White Finns and Ukrainian Bendera were especially brazenly operating.

We were evicted from the house to the cellar, and the Germans settled in it.

The advanced German fascist troops were rapidly moving to the East, instead of them they were driven by Modyars, who appointed the headman of the village of Lavrin, and his son a policeman. The selection of young people for work in Germany has begun.

My sister Nastenka and I also got into these lists. But my father bought off the headman with honey, and we were struck off the list.

All people, from young to old, were forced to work in the fields. For seven months, the occupiers were operating in our area, flogged with belts everyone who evaded slave labor, hung on the crossbars back with their hands. They walked around the village like robbers, even shooting wild birds.

The Germans found one girl in the field, who was walking from Chernyanka to Maly Khutor, and in winter time raped her in a stack to death.

All residents of Maly Khutor were forcibly forced to work on the Volotovsky grader to clear it of snow.

Liberation

In January 1943, after the complete defeat of the Nazi troops near Stalingrad, Maly Khutor was liberated by the heroic soldiers of the Red Army.

Our soldiers-liberators were greeted by the inhabitants with joy, with bread and salt, the soldiers and commanders were well-dressed, all in white coats, felt boots and hats, armed with machine guns, columns of tanks were walking along the Volotovsky grader. The companies marched in columns with harmonicas and songs.

But this joy was partially overshadowed by the heavy losses of our troops near Chernyanka, on the barrow, where the sugar factory is now located. Our intelligence could not detect the lurking Nazis with machine guns in the attics of the Chernyansky plant vegetable oils, and our troops marched in formation towards Chernyanka, hoping that there were no Germans there, and the Nazis mowed down our soldiers and officers with aimed fire. The losses were great. All the houses in Maly Khutor were inhabited by wounded soldiers and commanders.

21 soldiers and officers were accommodated in our house, one of them died in our house, the rest were taken to the medical battalion.

Mobilization to the front

The mobilization to the front of the guys born in 1924-1925, who did not have time to leave for the Don with our retreating troops, and were intercepted by German motorcyclists, began immediately after the liberation of the Chernyansky region from the Nazi invaders.

On April 25, 1943, teenagers born in 1926 were drafted into the army. I was then 16 years and 6 months old. At the same time, my father was mobilized to dig trenches for our military units.

My parents stuffed a sack with Easter cakes, boiled meat and painted eggs. My younger brother Andrey and I loaded the food onto a cart and early in the morning at dawn set off for the Chernyansky district military registration and enlistment office.

But it wasn’t there, we reached a steep ravine, which is outside the village of Maly Khutor, where warehouses of German shells were located on the field from the ravine to Chernyansky Kurgan, these warehouses were bombed by a German plane, the shells began to explode en masse, and fragments fell like rain on the road along which we went to the collection point.

We had to change our route of movement, went along the Morkvinsky ravine, got safely to the military registration and enlistment office, suddenly German planes flew in.

The military commissar ordered that all pre-conscripts on foot get to the city of Ostrogozhsk, there they immerse themselves in freight wagons and get to the city of Murom, where the transit point was located.

At the distribution point

At the distribution point in the city of Murom, they underwent basic military training and took the Military Oath. We studied the 45 mm field gun. After completing the basic military training and taking the oath, they began to send us to military units.

The food at the transit point was very poor, a bowl of soup with two peas, a piece of black bread and a mug of tea.

I ended up in the 1517 mobile anti-aircraft artillery regiment, which was faced with the task of repelling massive enemy aircraft raids on the Gorky Automobile Plant, which provided lorry trucks for the front.

The anti-aircraft gunners twice repulsed the air raids, after which the Germans no longer tried to bomb the car factory.

At that time, the commander of the military district, Colonel Dolgopolov, came to our battery, who here at the gun gave me the rank of senior soldier-corporal, with this rank I completed my entire military career until the end of the war, the second gun number - loader.

Before being sent to the front line, I joined the Lenin Komsomol. We wore the Komsomol ticket on our chest in sewn pockets on the underside of the tunic and were very proud of it.

On the front line

A month later, we were supplied with new American 85-millimeter anti-aircraft artillery guns, loaded into a train and taken by train to the front to cover our forward positions from raids by fascist planes and tanks.

On the way, our echelon was subjected to raids by fascist aircraft. Therefore, I had to get to Pskov, where the front line was located on its own, overcoming many rivers, the bridges across which were destroyed.

We got to the front line, deployed our combat positions, and on the same night we had to repulse a large group of enemy aircraft bombing our forward positions. At night, a hundred or more shells were fired, bringing the gun barrels to a blaze.

At this time, our battalion commander, Captain Sankin, was killed by an enemy mine, two platoon commanders were seriously wounded, and four gun commanders were killed.

We buried them here on the battery in weeds near the city of Pskov.

They moved forward, pursuing the Nazis along with infantry and tanks, liberating the cities and villages of Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The war ended off the coast of the Baltic Sea near the walls of the capital of Soviet Estonia, Tallinn, where they gave the Victory salute with gun salvos from military guns.

I saluted with 85 mm guns with ten live and 32 blank shells.

All the soldiers saluted from their regular weapons, from guns, from carbines, from pistols. There was jubilation and joy throughout the day and night.

Many Chernyants served in our battery: Mironenko Alexey from the village of Orlyka, Ilyushchenko from Chernyanka, Kuznetsov Nikolai from the village of Andreevka, Boychenko Nikolay Ivanovich and Boychenko Nikolai Dmitrievich from the village of Maly Khutor and many others.

There were seven people in our gun crew, of which 4 Chernyants, one Belarusian, one Ukrainian and one Tatar girl.

They lived in a damp dugout near the gun. There was water in the dugout under the floor. Firing positions changed very often, as the leading edge of the ground troops moved. For two front-line years they changed hundreds of times.

Our anti-aircraft artillery regiment was mobile. There was no need to retreat. All the time, fighting, they moved forward and forward, pursuing the retreating Nazis.

The morale of the soldiers and officers was very high. There was only one slogan: “Forward to the West!”, “For the Motherland”, “For Stalin!” Defeat the enemy - that was the order. And the anti-aircraft gunners did not flinch, they beat the enemy day and night, allowing our infantry and tanks to move forward.

The food at the front was good, they gave more bread, bacon and American stew, 100 grams of alcohol each.

Our regiment had hundreds of downed enemy planes to its credit, repulsed violent attacks, forcing them to return home without completing their combat mission.

After the end of the war, I was sent to a training company for the training of junior commanders. Soviet army. A year after graduation, I was awarded the military rank of junior sergeant and left in the same training company as a squad leader, then as an assistant platoon commander, I was assigned military ranks sergeant, senior sergeant and foreman, at the same time was the Komsomol organizer of the company.

Then we were sent to the VNOS troops (air surveillance, alert and communications), which were located along the coast of the Baltic Sea on 15 meter towers.

At that time, American planes violated our air borders every day, I was then the head of the radio station and radar station. Our duties included timely detection of aircraft violating the border and reporting to the airfield for response.

I had to serve until 1951.

Grandma was 8 years old when the war started, they were terribly hungry, the main thing was to feed the soldiers, and only then everyone else, and once she heard the women talking that the soldiers give food if they are given, but she did not understand what they need to give , came to the dining room, stands roaring, an officer came out, asking why the girl was crying, she recounted what she had heard, and he neighed and brought her a whole can of porridge. This is how granny fed four brothers and sisters.

My grandfather was a captain in a motorized rifle regiment. It was 1942, the Germans took Leningrad into a blockade. Hunger, disease and death. The only way to deliver provisions to Leningrad is the "road of life" - the frozen Lake Ladoga. Late at night, a column of trucks with flour and medicines, led by my grandfather, headed down the road of life. Of the 35 cars, only 3 reached Leningrad, the rest went under the ice, like the grandfather's wagon. He dragged the saved bag of flour to the city on foot for 6 km, but did not reach it - he froze because of wet clothes at -30.

The father of a grandmother's friend died in the war, when that one was not even a year old. When the soldiers began to return from the war, she put on the most beautiful dress every day and went to the station to meet trains. The girl said she was going to look for her dad. She ran among the crowd, approached the soldiers, asked: "Will you be my dad?" One man took her by the hand, said: "well, lead" 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 blockade 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 they didn’t have time to leave for the bomb shelter, she sat down and played, loudly, for the whole house. People listened to her music and were not distracted by the shots. 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 present-day Moldova, respectively, he began to fight from the very first days. He never spoke much about the war, because the border troops were in the department of the NKVD - it was impossible to tell anything. But we did hear one story. During the forced breakthrough of the Nazis to Baku, grandfather's platoon was thrown into the rear of the Germans. The guys pretty quickly got surrounded in the mountains. They had to get out within 2 weeks, only a few survived, including the grandfather. The soldiers came out to our front exhausted and distraught with hunger. The orderly ran to the village and got a sack of potatoes and a few loaves of bread there. The potatoes were boiled and the hungry soldiers greedily pounced on the food. The 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 a few potato peelings. An hour and a half later, all my grandfather's colleagues who went through the hell of encirclement, including the platoon commander and the ill-fated orderly, died in terrible agony from intestinal volvulus. Only my grandfather survived. He went through the whole war, was twice wounded 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, those at me.

During the war, my grandmother was very small, she lived with her older brother and mother, her father left before the girl was born. There was a terrible famine, and great-grandmother was too weak, she had already been lying 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. Slowly, slowly, my sister came out. So my grandparents were not left orphans. And grandfather, a smart fellow, 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 gopher holes until a frightened animal jumped out of there. Grandfather grabbed him and killed him instantly so that he would not run away. He dragged home what he could find, and they were fried, and grandmother says that it was a real feast, and the brother's booty helped them to hold out. Grandfather is no longer alive, but grandmother lives and every summer expects numerous grandchildren to visit. She cooks excellently, a lot, generously, and she herself takes a piece of bread with a tomato and eats after everyone else. So I got used to eating little, simply and irregularly. And he feeds his family to the bone. Thanks her. She went through something that makes her heart freeze, and raised a big glorious family.

My great-grandfather was drafted in 1942. Went through the war, was wounded, returned as a Hero Soviet Union. On his way home after the end of the war, he stood at the train station where a train full of children had arrived. different ages. There were also those who met - the parents. Only now 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. For the first and only time in 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 the letters, he indicated that he was going in a ring through our city (by that time my grandmother was born). A neighbor, who at that time was 14 years old, found out about this, she took a 3-month-old grandmother and took it to 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, after all, is also courage, as if nothing had happened, to continue detachment affairs with children. I can imagine how the counselors cried at night and whispered news to each other.

My great-grandfather went through two wars. In the First World War he was an ordinary soldier, after the war he went to receive a military education. 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 the enemies of the country and the people, but by simple hooligans who wanted to steal his awards.

Today my husband and I finished watching "Young Guard". I sit on the balcony, look at the stars, listen to the nightingales. How many young guys and girls never lived to see victory. Life has never been seen. Husband and daughter are sleeping in the room. What a joy it is to know that your favorite houses! Today is May 9, 2016. The main holiday of the peoples former USSR. We live as free people thanks to those who lived during the war years. Who was at the front and in the rear. God forbid, we will not find out what our grandfathers were like.

My grandfather lived in the 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. Because of severe hunger, they wanted to kill the dog and eat it. Grandfather, being small, untied the dog from the kennel and let him run, for which he received from his mother (my great-grandmother). In the evening of the same day, the dog brought them dead cat, and then he began to drag the bones and bury them, and grandfather dug them up and dragged them home (they cooked soup on these bones). So they lived until the 43rd year, thanks to the dog, and then she simply did not return home.

The most memorable story from my grandmother was about her work in a military hospital. When Nazis were dying, they couldn't get them and the girls out of the wards from the second floor to the corpse truck... they just threw the corpses out of the window. Subsequently, for this they were given to the tribunal.

A neighbor, a veteran of the Second World War, went through the entire war in the infantry to Berlin. Somehow in the morning they were smoking near the entrance, talking. He was struck by the phrase - they show in a movie about the war - soldiers are running - cheers at the top of their lungs ... - this is a fantasy. We, he says, always went on the attack in silence, because it was dumb as fuck.

During the war, my great-grandmother worked in a shoemaker's shop, she fell into a blockade, and in order to somehow feed her family, she stole laces, at that time they were made of 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. Great-grandmother drowned in a well when she was gathering rose hips for her daughter. Great-grandfather went through the whole war, reached Berlin. Killed by blowing himself up on an abandoned mine while returning home. All that remained of him was his memory and the Order of the Red Star. Grandmother kept it for more than thirty years until it was stolen (she knew who, but could not prove it). I still can't understand how people raised their hands. I know these people, they studied in the same class with their great-granddaughter, they were friends. How interesting life has turned.

As a child, he often sat on his grandfather's lap. He had a scar on his wrist that I touched and examined. They were teeth marks. Years later, my father told the story of the scar. My grandfather, a veteran, went to reconnaissance, in the Smolensk region they encountered the SS-vtsy. After close combat, only one of the enemies remained alive. He was huge and motherly. SS-man in a rage bit his grandfather's wrist to the meat, but was broken and captured. Grandfather and company were presented for another award.

My great-grandfather is gray-haired since he was 19 years old. As soon as the war began, he was immediately called up, not allowing him to finish his studies. He told that they were going to the Germans, but it did not turn out the way 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 everyone would see it and kill it. But no, the dog just sniffed it and licked it while running away. That's why we have 3 shepherds at home)

My grandmother was 13 years old when she was wounded in the back during a bombing by shrapnel. 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 to her grandmother’s house at night, made dressings, 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 that 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 were very strict to ensure that no one stole and was very severely punished for this. And in order to somehow feed their children, women put on two pairs of tights and put grain between them. Or, for example, one distracts the guards while the children are taken to the workshop where butter was whipped, they caught small pieces and fed them. The great-great-grandmother had all three children survived that period, and her son no longer eats butter.

My great-grandmother was 16 when German troops came to Belarus. They were examined by doctors in order to be sent to the camps to work. Then the girls were smeared 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 a lot of people. If it wasn'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 does not remember the names of his relatives, but he remembers where and how Leningrad was shelled. He also has old habits. There is always all the food in the house in huge quantities, what if there is hunger? Doors are locked with several locks - for peace of mind. And there are 3 blankets in the bed, although the house is warm. Watching films about the war with an indifferent look ..

My great-grandfather fought near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). And during one of the skirmishes, he was hit by shrapnel in his eyes, from which he was instantly blind. As the shots ceased to be heard, he began to look for the voice of the foreman, whose leg was torn off. Grandfather found the foreman, took him in his arms. And so they went. The blind grandfather went to the commands of the one-legged foreman. Both survived. Grandfather even saw after operations.

When the war began, my grandfather was 17 years old, and according to the law of war, he had to arrive at the draft board on the day of majority to be sent to 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 the day of delay he was sent to the penal battalion, and their department was sent to Leningrad, it was cannon fodder, those who are not sorry to be sent into battle first without weapons. As an 18-year-old guy, he ended up in hell, but he went through the whole war, was never wounded, the only relatives did not know if he was alive or not, there was no right to correspond. He reached Berlin, returned home a year after the war, since he still served active duty. His own mother, having met him on the street, did not recognize him after 5.5 years, and fainted when he called her mother. And he cried like a boy, saying "mom, it's me Vanya, your Vanya"

Great-grandfather at the age of 16, in May 1941, having added 2 years to himself, in order to be hired, he got a job in Ukraine in the city of Krivoy Rog at a mine. In June, when the war began, he was drafted 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. Great-grandfather woke up, realized that he was alive, crawled upstairs, shouting "Is anyone alive?" Two responded. Three of them got out, crawled to some village, where a woman found them, 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 prisoner. So my great-grandfather ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp. After some time, due to the fact that my great-grandfather was a young, healthy peasant guy, from this camp, he was transferred to a concentration camp in West Germany, where he already worked in the fields of the local rich, and then as a civilian. In 1945, during the bombing, he was closed in one house, where he sat all day until the American allies entered the city. When he came out, he saw that all the buildings in the district 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 all over Germany, Poland, Belarus, 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 great-grandfather fought in Japanese war and returned home after graduating in 1949. I can say with confidence that my great-grandfather was born in a shirt. Three times he escaped death and went through two wars.

Grandmother said that her father served in the war, saved the commander, carried him on his back through the whole forest, listened to his heartbeat, when he brought him, he saw that the commander’s entire back looked like a sieve, and he only heard his heart.

I have been searching for several years. Groups of searchers searched for nameless graves in forests, swamps, on 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 medallions. Some were written literally moments before death. Until now, literally, I remember 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 told his grandson stories all his life about how he was afraid during the war. How afraid, sitting in a tank together with a younger comrade, go to 3 German tanks and destroy them all. As I was afraid, under the shelling of aircraft, crawling over the field in order to restore contact with the command. As he was afraid to lead a detachment of very young guys 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 will lie." So, living in constant fear, my great-grandfather went through the whole war. Fearing, he reached Berlin. He received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and, despite the experience, remained a wonderful, incredibly kind and sympathetic person.

Great-grandfather was, one might say, the supply manager in his unit. Somehow they were transported by a convoy of cars to a new place and ended up in a German encirclement. There is nowhere to run, only the river. So the grandfather snatched the porridge cauldron out of the car and, holding on to it, swam to the other side. No one else from his unit survived.

During the years of war and famine, my great-grandmother went out for a short time to get bread. And left her daughter (my grandmother) at home alone. She was five years old at the time. So, if the great-grandmother had not returned a few minutes earlier, then her child could have been eaten by the neighbors.

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Kuznetsov Alexander
Antonovich

Then, nevertheless, she realized that the voice was Russian, she opened the door and how she fell with her head on my chest, how she wept, how she sobbed! I can't tear her away from me. Then she pulled herself together and shouted into the house: “Mom, these are our soldiers!” Her mother also rushed out of the room, throwing on some of her clothes, because it was freezing outside. It was, as I remember now, the fifteenth of January. The mother also cried out: “Oh my God! Finally!" And then she thought about it and asked: “But how did you get to us, because we have Germans in our village?”

Beskhlebnov Valentin
Fedorovich

We made different kinds jumps. The most difficult are jumps on water, on the forest and on city buildings. Since we were being prepared for a landing in the German rear, we were thoroughly prepared. Every week we made trips of thirty to forty kilometers. Exit - this means with a full calculation of thirty kilometers you have to go. Moreover, they arranged exercises along the way for us: they could give commands: “The enemy is on the left! Enemy on the right! Prepare for battle!"

Gerasimov Vladimir
Alexeyevich

After a while, everything went quiet. They told me: "That's it, the Germans have surrendered!" And as soon as I found out about it, I immediately fell. So strong, you know, before that I experienced tension. Didn't feel anything. And as all this weakened, it was as if something pierced me. I didn't understand anything anymore. In such an environment, everything is indifferent to you: they will kill you, they will not kill you, everything is somehow weakening. And then I wept: it was impossible to hold back the tears. Guys come up to me, they say: “Why are you crying? The war is over."

Nevessky Evgeny
Nikolaevich

The rumble is distant, almost continuous, now growing, now subsiding, it has been disturbing me for several hours, I could not get away from it, it indestructibly climbed into my ears. It seemed to me that he was fraught with some kind of danger. Deaf forest. The narrow clearing I came to stretched into the distance. It was clean, reassuringly empty, there were no traces of people, and I decided to follow it. Raw, cloudy day. And only a distant rumble, as if saturating the air...

Reshetnyak Miron
Ivanovich

We were brought up that way Soviet power, there was such patriotism that they cared little about their personal interests. We cared about what was better, not so much for ourselves as for others. If I did something good for another person, I considered that I did good deed. The upbringing was different, patriotism. If there was no patriotism, we would not have won. To kill a man, you have to hate him. If you do not hate, then it is terrible to kill. If you hate a person with all the fibers of your soul, if he is an enemy, if he rapes, kills, it is easy to kill him. This is what I understand, write this down.

Kozhukhar George
Karpovich

It's hard for me, weakness affects; only on May 12 he was discharged from the hospital after repeated inflammation of the lungs, his chest hurts, there is not enough air. Not only does the gun weigh 16 kilograms, but the deployed bipod makes it difficult to walk. I had to carry it over my shoulder. On the side is a bag with 18 cartridges, each weighing 130 grams. Two cartridges used up when firing at a firing point. I move forward with those who advance. We cross the line of the first trenches and stumble upon the fire of a machine-gun point.

Friberg Oscar
Larsovich

But our battalion fought near Stalingrad! At first, the heat was so unbearable that the tunics simply broke, they were so salty from our sweat. And then such frosts struck that I remembered the winter of 1943 for the rest of my life ... Despite the weather, I had to pull the connection through the snow. Hands froze, badly obeyed when it was necessary to connect the wires ...

Zhilkin Vasily
Grigorievich

We had neither retreats nor advances. We, like marmots, dug into the ground and were only on the defensive all the time. Shells fly, mines burst, and as soon as the shelling ends, we dig deeper. The ground there was sandy, crumbled after each shelling. But there was no panic in our battle formations, the guys knew what they were doing. Morally, we set them up back in Penza. After each shelling, you begin to check the personnel, and in response you hear: “Everything is fine!” A coward dies many times, a hero dies once.

Harutyun Gerasim
Macakovich

And the soldiers - of course - friendship. Just friendship! If someone is injured, be sure to help. Well, it's good to fight. This was our goal - only to fight well! These were all our thoughts - it was only good to fight. And don't think about anything else!

Dulin Mikhail
Yakovlevich

He says: “Here you will drive one and a half or two kilometers, there will be a railway. And here this railway you will have to contact our intelligence. The password for communication is “lock”, the response is “key”. And so I, therefore, arrived, found this intelligence. And the German was already two hundred meters away.

I was born on May 20, 1926 in the village of Pokrovka, Volokonovsky District. Kursk region, in the employee's family. His father worked as a secretary of the village council, an accountant at the Tavrichesky state farm, his mother was an illiterate peasant woman from a poor family, half an orphan, and was a housewife. There were 5 children in the family, I was the eldest. Before the war, our family often went hungry. The years 1931 and 1936 were especially difficult. During these years, the villagers ate the grass growing around; quinoa, cattail, cumin roots, potato tops, sorrel, beet tops, katran, sirgibuz, etc. In these years there were terrible queues for bread, chintz, matches, soap, salt. Only in 1940 did life become easier, more satisfying, more fun.

In 1939, the state farm was destroyed, deliberately recognized as harmful. Father began to work at the Yutanovskaya state mill as an accountant. The family left Pokrovka for Yutanovka. In 1941 I graduated from the 7th grade of Yutanovskaya high school. Parents moved to their native village, to their house. Here the Great found us Patriotic War 1941-1945. I remember this sign well. On June 15 (or 16) in the evening, together with other teenagers from our street, we went to meet the cattle returning from the pasture. Those who met met at the well. Suddenly, one of the women, looking at the setting sun, shouted: “Look, what is this in the sky?” The solar disk has not yet completely sunk below the horizon. Behind the horizon, three huge pillars of fire blazed. "What will happen?" The old woman Kozhina Akulina Vasilievna, the midwife of the village, said: “Get ready, old ladies, for the terrible. There will be a war! How did this know old woman that the war will break out very soon.

There they announced to everyone that Nazi Germany had attacked our Motherland. And at night, carts with men who received summons to call for war were pulled to the regional center, to the military registration and enlistment office. Day and night in the village one could hear the howling, the crying of women and old people, who were seeing off their breadwinners to the front. Within 2 weeks, all young men were sent to the front.

My father received the summons on July 4, 1941, and on July 5, Sunday, we said goodbye to my father, and he went to the front. Troubled days dragged on, news from fathers, brothers, friends, grooms were waiting in every house.

My village has had a particularly hard time because of its geographical location. The highway of strategic importance, connecting Kharkov with Voronezh, passes through it, dividing Sloboda and Novoselovka into two parts.

From Zarechnaya Street, where my family lived in house number 5, there was an uphill climb, quite steeply. And already in the autumn of 1941, this highway was mercilessly bombed by fascist vultures that broke through the front line.

The road was packed to overflowing with those moving east, towards the Don. There were army units that got out of the chaos of the war: ragged, dirty Red Army soldiers, there was equipment, mostly lorries - cars for ammunition, refugees were walking (then they were called evacuees), they were driving herds of cows, flocks of sheep, herds of horses from the western regions of our Motherland. This flood destroyed the crop. Our houses never had locks. Military units were located at the behest of commanders. The door to the house opened, and the commander asked: “Are there any soldiers?” If the answer is "No!" or “Already gone”, then 20 or more people came in and collapsed from fatigue on the floor, immediately fell asleep. In the evening, in each hut, the housewives cooked potatoes, beets, soup in 1.5-2-bucket irons. They woke the sleeping fighters and offered to have dinner, but not everyone sometimes had the strength to get up to eat. And when the autumn rains began, the wet, dirty windings were removed from the tired sleeping fighters, dried by the stove, then they kneaded the dirt and shook it out. Overcoats were dried by the stove. The inhabitants of our village helped in any way they could: with simple products, treatment, the legs of the fighters soared, etc.

At the end of July 1941, we were sent to build a defensive line, outside the village of Borisovka, Volche-Aleksandrovsky village council. August was warm, people in the trenches were apparently invisible. The comfrey campers spent the night in the sheds of three villages, taking biscuits and raw potatoes, 1 glass of millet and 1 glass of beans for 10 days. They didn’t feed us in the trenches, they sent us for 10 days, then they let us go home to wash ourselves, mend our clothes and shoes, help our family, and after 3 days come back to do difficult things. earthworks.

Once 25 people were sent home. When we walked through the streets of the district center and went to the outskirts, we saw a huge flame that engulfed the road along which we should go to our village. Fear, terror took possession of us. We were approaching, and the flames were rushing, spinning with a crash, howling. Burning wheat on one side and barley on the other side of the road. The length of the fields is up to 4 kilometers. The grain, burning, makes a crack like the sound of a machine gun scribbling. Smoke, fumes. The older women led us around through the Assikov gully. At home they asked us what was burning in Volokanovka, we said that wheat and barley were burning on the vine - in a word, unharvested bread was burning. And there was no one to clean up, tractor drivers, combine operators went to war, working cattle and equipment were driven east to the Don, the only lorry and horses were taken into the army. Who set it on fire? For what purpose? What for? - still no one knows. But because of the fires in the fields, the region was left without bread, without grain for sowing.

1942, 1943, 1944 were very difficult years for the villagers.

No bread, no salt, no matches, no soap, no kerosene were brought to the village. There was no radio in the village; they learned about the state of hostilities from the mouths of refugees, fighters and just all sorts of talkers. In autumn, it was impossible to dig trenches, because the black soil (up to 1-1.5 m) got wet and dragged along behind our feet. We were sent to clean up and level the highway. The norms were also heavy: for 1 person 12 meters in length, with a width of 10-12 meters. The war was approaching our village, the battles were going on for Kharkov. In winter, the flow of refugees stopped, and army units went daily, some to the front, others to rest - to the rear ... In winter, as in other seasons, enemy aircraft cars, tanks, army units were breaking through and bombing moving along the road. There was not a day that the cities of our region - Kursk, Belgorod, Korocha, Stary Oskol, Novy Oskol, Valuyki, Rastornaya - were not bombed, so that the enemies did not bomb airfields. The large airfield was located 3-3.5 kilometers from our village. The pilots lived in the houses of the villagers, ate in the canteen located in the building of the seven-year school. Pilot officer Nikolai Ivanovich Leonov, a native of Kursk, lived in my family. We escorted him to assignments, said goodbye, and my mother blessed, wanting to return alive. At this time, Nikolai Ivanovich led the search for his family, lost during the evacuation. Subsequently, there was a correspondence with my family from which I learned that Nikolai Ivanovich received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, found a wife and eldest daughter, but never found a little daughter. When the pilot Nikolai Cherkasov did not return from the mission, the whole village mourned his death.

Until the spring and autumn of 1944, the fields of our village were not sown, there were no seeds, there was no living tax, no equipment, and the old women, the youngsters were not able to process and sow the fields. In addition, the saturation of the fields with mines interfered. The fields are overgrown with impenetrable weeds. The population was doomed to a half-starved existence, mainly eating beets. It was prepared in the autumn of 1941 in deep pits. Beets were fed to both the soldiers of the Red Army and the prisoners in the Pokrovsky concentration camp. In the concentration camp, on the outskirts of the village, there were up to 2 thousand captured Soviet soldiers. Late August - early September 1941, we dug trenches and built dugouts along the railway from Volokonovka to Staroivanovka station.

Those who were able to work went to dig trenches, but the unemployable population remained in the village.

After 10 days, the comfreys were allowed to go home for three days. At the beginning of September 1941, I came home, like all my friends in the trenches. On the second day, I went out into the yard, an old neighbor called me: “Tan, you came, and your friends Nyura and Zina left, evacuated.” I was in what I was, barefoot, in one dress I ran up the mountain, onto the highway, to catch up with my friends, not even knowing when they had left.

Refugees and soldiers marched in groups. I rushed from one group to another, crying and calling my friends. I was stopped by an elderly fighter who reminded me of my father. He asked me where, why, to whom I was running, if I had any documents. And then he said menacingly: “March home, to his mother. If you deceive me, I will find you and shoot you.” I got scared and ran back along the side of the road. So much time has passed, and even now I wonder where the forces came from then. Running up to the gardens of our street, I went to the mother of my friends to make sure that they had left. My friends left - it was a bitter truth for me. Having cried, she decided that she had to return home and ran through the gardens. Grandmother Aksinya met me and began to shame me that I was not saving the harvest, trampling, and called me to talk to her. I tell her about my misadventures. I'm crying... Suddenly we hear the sound of flying fascist planes. And the grandmother saw that the planes were making some kind of maneuvers, and they were flying ... bottles! (So, screaming, said the grandmother). Grabbing my hand, she went to the brick basement of a neighbor's house. But as soon as we stepped out of the hallway of my grandmother's house, there were many explosions. We ran, grandmother was in front, I was behind, and only ran to the middle of the neighbor's garden, when grandmother fell to the ground, and blood appeared on her stomach. I realized that my grandmother was wounded, and with a cry I ran through three estates to my house, hoping to find and take rags to bandage the wounded. Running to the house, I saw that the roof of the house had been torn off, all window frames, fragments of glass everywhere, out of 3 doors in place, only one skewed door on a single hinge. There is not a soul in the house. In horror, I run to the cellar, and there we had a trench under the cherry tree. In the trench were my mother, my sisters and brother.

When the bomb explosions stopped and the sound of the all-clear siren rang out, we all left the trench, I asked my mother to give me rags to bandage Grandma Ksyusha. My sisters and I ran to where my grandmother lay. She was surrounded by people. Some soldier took off his undercoat and covered the grandmother's body. She was buried without a coffin at the edge of her potato garden. The houses of our village remained without windows, without doors until 1945. When the war was coming to an end, they began to gradually give glass and nails according to the lists. I continued to dig trenches in warm weather, like all adult fellow villagers, to clean the highway in the slush.

In 1942 we were digging a deep anti-tank ditch between our village of Pokrovka and the airfield. There I got in trouble. I was sent upstairs to clear the ground, the ground crawled under my feet, and I could not resist and fell from a 2-meter height to the bottom of the trench, got a concussion, a shift in the spinal discs and an injury to my right kidney. They treated with home remedies, a month later I worked again at the same facility, but we did not have time to finish it. Our troops retreated with battles. There were strong battles for the airfield, for my Pokrovka.

On July 1, 1942, Nazi soldiers entered Pokrovka. During the fighting and the deployment of fascist units in the meadow, along the banks of the Quiet Pine River and in our gardens, we were in the cellars, occasionally looked out to find out what was happening on the street.

To the music of harmonicas, sleek fascists checked our houses, and then, having taken off their military uniforms and armed with sticks, they began to chase chickens, killed them and roasted them on skewers. Soon there was not a single chicken left in the village. Another military unit of the Nazis arrived and ate ducks and geese. For the sake of fun, the Nazis scattered the feather of birds in the wind. For a week, the village of Pokrovka was covered with a blanket of fluff and feathers. The village looked as white as after falling snow. Then the Nazis ate pigs, sheep, calves, did not touch (or maybe did not have time) old cows. We had a goat, they did not take goats, but mocked them. The Nazis began to build a bypass road around the mountain Dedovskaya Shapka with the help of captured Soviet soldiers imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Earth - thick layer Chernozem was loaded onto trucks and taken away, they said that the earth was loaded onto platforms and sent to Germany. Many young girls were sent to Germany for hard labor, they were shot and flogged for resistance.

Every Saturday, by 10 o'clock, our rural communists were to appear at the commandant's office of our village. Among them was Dudoladov Kupriyan Kupriyanovich, the former chairman of the village council. A man two meters tall, overgrown with a beard, sick, leaning on a stick, he walked to the commandant's office. Women always asked: “Well, Dudolad, have you already gone home from the commandant’s office?” It was like checking the time. One of the Saturdays was the last for Kupriyan Kupriyanovich, he did not return from the commandant's office. What the Nazis did with him is unknown to this day. On one of the autumn days of 1942, a woman came to the village, covered with a checkered scarf. She was assigned to an overnight stay, and at night the Nazis took her away and shot her outside the village. In 1948, her grave was searched for, and a Soviet officer who arrived, the husband of the executed woman, took away her remains.

In mid-August 1942, we were sitting on a cellar mound, the Nazis in tents in our garden, near the house. None of us noticed how brother Sasha went to the fascist tents. Soon we saw how the fascist kicked the seven-year-old kid ... Mom and I rushed at the fascist. The fascist knocked me down with a blow of his fist, I fell. Mom took Sasha and me crying to the cellar. One day a man in a fascist uniform came up to our cellar. We saw that he was repairing the cars of the Nazis and, turning to his mother, said: “Mom, there will be an explosion late at night. No one should leave the cellars at night, no matter how the military rages, let them yell, shoot, close up tight and sit. Pass it on quietly to all the neighbors, all along the street. There was an explosion at night. They shot, ran, the Nazis were looking for the organizers of the explosion, shouting: "Partisan, partisan." We were silent. In the morning we saw that the Nazis had removed the camp and left, the bridge over the river had been destroyed. Grandfather Fyodor Trofimovich Mazokhin, who saw this moment (we called him grandfather Mazai in childhood), said that when I drove onto the bridge passenger car, followed by a bus filled with military men, then a passenger car, and suddenly a terrible explosion, and all this equipment collapsed into the river. Many fascists died, but by morning everything was pulled out and taken out. The Nazis hid their losses from us, Soviet people. By the end of the day, a military unit arrived in the village, and they cut down all the trees, all the bushes, as if they had shaved the village, there were bare huts and sheds. Who is this person who warned us, the inhabitants of Pokrovka, about the explosion, who saved the lives of many, no one in the village knows.

When occupiers rule on your land, you are not free to dispose of your time, you have no rights, life can end at any moment. On a rainy night in late autumn, when the residents had already entered their homes, there was a concentration camp in the village, its guards, the commandant's office, the commandant, the burgomaster, the Nazis burst into our house, breaking the door. They, illuminating our house with lanterns, dragged all of us from the stove and put us facing the wall. The mother was the first, then the sisters, then the crying brother, and the last was me. The Nazis opened the chest and dragged everything that was newer. From the valuables they took a bicycle, father's suit, chrome boots, a sheepskin coat, new galoshes, etc. When they left, we stood still for a long time, afraid that they would return and shoot us. Many were robbed that night. Mom would get up in the dark, go out into the street and watch which chimney the smoke would come out of to send one of us, the children, me or sisters, to ask for 3-4 burning coals to light the stove. They ate mostly beets. Boiled beets were carried in buckets to construction new road feed the prisoners of war. They were great sufferers: ragged, beaten, rattling shackles and chains on their legs, swollen with hunger, they walked back and forth with a slow, staggering gait. Fascist guards with dogs walked along the sides of the column. Many died right on the construction site. And how many children, teenagers were blown up by mines, were wounded during the bombing, skirmishes, during air battles.

The end of January 1943 was still rich in such events in the life of the village as the appearance of a huge number of leaflets, both Soviet and Nazi. Already frostbitten, in rags, fascist soldiers were walking back from the Volga, and fascist planes dropped leaflets on the villages, where they talked about victories over Soviet troops on the Don and Volga. We learned from Soviet leaflets that battles for the village were coming, that the inhabitants of Slobodskaya and Zarechnaya streets had to leave the village. Having taken all the belongings so that they could hide from the frost, the residents of the street left and for three days outside the village in the pits, in the anti-tank ditch, they suffered, waiting for the end of the battles for Pokrovka. The village was bombed by Soviet planes, as the Nazis settled in our homes. Everything that can be burned for heating - cabinets, chairs, wooden beds, tables, doors, all the Nazis burned. When the village was liberated, Golovinovskaya street, houses, sheds were burned.

On February 2, 1943, we returned home, cold, hungry, many of us were ill for a long time. On the meadow separating our street from Slobodskaya lay the black corpses of the murdered fascists. Only at the beginning of March, when the sun began to warm, and the corpses thawed, was the burial in a common grave of the Nazi soldiers who died during the liberation of the village organized. In February-March 1943, we, the inhabitants of the village of Pokrovka, kept the highway in constant good condition, along which vehicles with shells also went, Soviet soldiers to the front, and he was not far away, the whole country was intensely preparing for the summer general battle on the formed Kursk Bulge. May-July and the beginning of August 1943, together with my fellow villagers, I was again in the trenches near the village of Zalomnoye, which is located along the Moscow-Donbass railway.

On my next visit to the village, I learned about the misfortune in our family. Brother Sasha went with the older boys to the Torah. There was a tank that had been knocked out and abandoned by the Nazis, there were a lot of shells around it. The children put a large projectile with the wings down, put a smaller one on it, and hit the third one. From the explosion, the guys were lifted up and thrown into the river. My brother's friends were wounded, one had his leg broken, the other was wounded in the arm, leg and part of his tongue was torn off, his brother was torn off thumb right foot and there were countless scratches.

During the bombing or shelling, for some reason it seemed to me that they wanted to kill only me, and they were aiming at me, and I always asked myself with tears and bitterness, what had I managed to do so badly?

War is scary! This is blood, the loss of relatives and friends, this is robbery, these are the tears of children and the elderly, violence, humiliation, deprivation of a person of all the rights and opportunities given by his nature.

From the memoirs of Tatyana Semyonovna Bogatyreva

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Rubin Vladimir
Naumovich

We were in tents, lit a fire, candles. We had a big huge tent. I see who is behaving. One is writing a letter, the other is grieving, the third is doing something, I don’t know. Everyone prepared differently. And I wonder which one of us will survive? It's generally interesting. I tried to be an analyst, I analyzed the situation. I was interested in how someone does what. Some still had a premonition, I think. Those who then died, I saw that they felt the approach of death.

Kuzmicheva Ludmila
Ivanovna

To be honest, when I arrived at the 40th tank brigade, at first its command did not even know that a girl had arrived with the marching company. I remember when at 4 o'clock in the morning we unloaded at the Krasnaya station near Lvov, we were immediately sent into battle. And, apparently, when I first arrived at the unit, the clerk who served at the headquarters looked at my last name and said: “Lord, have they completely grown cold there at the headquarters? Instead of a man, they recorded a girl. And crossed out the letter "a" in my last name. As a result, I got on the list as Kuzmichev.

Nechaev Yuri
Mikhailovich

Of course, the Germans did not even imagine that tanks could pass through there. And so, on the orders of the brigade commander, Colonel Naum Ivanovich Bukhov, our battalion passed through the forest, appeared where the Germans did not expect us, and made a little noise. The remaining tanks of the brigade continued to advance in the same place. The Germans did not notice that one tank battalion had disappeared from their field of vision. And we drove along this narrow road, no wider than the width of the tank, and went out to the Germans in the flank and rear.

Ryazantsev Dmitry
Ivanovich

And when they accompanied the infantry in battle, they fired only from a short stop. First, you define the target and command the mechanics - "Short!" Shot and went on wagging. Be sure to wag, left and right, but you can’t go straight, they will definitely beat you. And you go where he has just shot. Because he won't get there.

Savostin Nikolai
Sergeevich

The everyday life of war for the vast majority of our people is not romantic and pathetic words and “playing for the public”, but endless digging of the earth - by tankers and artillerymen to cover a tank or gun, by infantrymen - to hide themselves. This is sitting in a trench in the rain or snow, this is a more comfortable life in a dugout or hastily built dugout. Bombings, injuries, deaths, unthinkable hardships, meager bread, and labor, labor, labor...

Kosykh Alexander
Ivanovich

And when they found out that I was a tractor driver, I immediately became a driver! Out of 426 people, 30 of us were selected as drivers, the rest were gunners and loaders. Why did we go to mechanics? Because they already knew, they understood that in a war, a driver-mechanic dies less, because he drives the tank himself.

Erin Pavel
Nikolaevich

I leaned out, deployed a machine gun, an anti-aircraft "Browning", large-caliber. And gave a turn. I struck these submachine gunners and the driver. The officer jumped out of the car, I see - he is not in a field uniform! In a cap. And I look at right hand briefcase. I realized that some documents. It turns out that from this division, which was surrounded, at night it leaked somewhere through our battle formations. And he ran not to the right, where there is a bush, such a swampy place, but to the left. There is a bit of a hill - and a forest. Pine, oak there ... And I realized that I could not catch up with him, he would leave!

Orlov Nikolay
Grigorievich

All day on the 23rd, and all night until morning, we took on the blows of the 16th Panzer General Hube. They, apparently sensing that they had met with serious resistance, more thoroughly prepared an attack on the morning of the 24th. But during the night, workers from the factory pulled out the hulls of tanks and towers, and installed them in the form of fixed firing points. And on the 24th day, the Red Navy arrived to help us. They are twice... twice singing the Internationale in full height rise and follow me to attack!

Magdalyuk Alexey
Fedorovich

My native village was liberated at the end of March 1944, and we were still in Ukraine, but the regiment commander allowed me to go home: “I give you three days!” There are more than a hundred kilometers, but he gave me one T-34, even ordered some food to be given out so that I could drive home to my mother with at least some gifts. And when I arrived in the village, our neighbor Grechanyuk, a participant civil war, told all his fellow villagers: “I told you that Alexei would be the commander!”

Chubarev Mikhail
Dmitrievich

There was a continuous glow: due to the fact that shooting and shell explosions were going on all around, we could not even see the sun. About three thousand tanks participated in this famous tank battle. After the battle ended, the Germans turned west towards Kharkov and never attacked anywhere else. They were just building up, making barriers and creating defenses.