What does steal like an artist mean? Steal Like an Artist: 10 Lessons on Creative Expression
A widely known story about the fate of a peasant boy, Vanya Solntsev, who was orphaned during the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War and became the son of the regiment.
A series: School library (Children's literature)
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by liters company.
1897–1986
There is good Russian word- "composition". Today's schoolchild does not always understand this word correctly: he thinks that an essay is something assigned for school. And he, unfortunately, not without the help of teachers, is right in some ways, because all schoolchildren have to write essays in class, that is, do something that is not always pleasant, but obligatory, and even receive marks for this task.
I would like to remind you that the word “composition” was and still is called the works of Pushkin and Byron, Lermontov and Jack London, Nekrasov and Mark Twain, Turgenev and Jules Verne, Tolstoy and Conan Doyle, Chekhov and Kipling, Gorky, Rolland, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Hemingway and many other domestic and foreign writers. And it is no coincidence that when the most complete edition of the books of this or that writer comes out, the words are written on them: “ Complete collection essays."
To compose or compose, our compatriot, expert on the Russian language Vladimir Ivanovich Dal once said, is to invent, invent, invent, create mentally, produce with the spirit, with the power of imagination.
These are very precise words, and they can be attributed to the work of every real writer, artist, composer, scientist, when he invents, creates, creates, and we believe in this created, because this happens, this could or may happen in life.
Valentin Petrovich Kataev has always been and remains such a writer, such an artist for me. I knew and accepted him as such when, as a boy, I read “The Lonely Sail Whitens” and “I, Son working people...”, and a little later (it just happened!) – his previously written novel “Time, Forward!”. And then, when during the Patriotic War the story “Son of the Regiment” appeared - one of best books V Soviet literature for children - it was natural for me that it was written by Valentin Kataev.
Continuation of the reader's friendship with the writer in post-war years became acquainted with the books “A Farm in the Steppe”, “Winter Wind”, “For the Power of the Soviets”, which, together with the story “The Lonely Sail Whitens”, were later included in the epic “Waves of the Black Sea”, and, finally, with the book by V. Kataev “ A small iron door in the wall,” an unusual book, but very interesting for the reader and the work of the writer himself.
The works of Valentin Kataev have become good companions for people of all ages - big and small. They excite the reader, they reveal to him a great and complex world life. They sometimes, for example, like the “adult” story by V. Kataev “The Holy Well,” cause heated debate. But people argue about what they care about...
Before talking about the story “Son of the Regiment,” which you will read in this book, I would like to talk a little about its author. I know that children, and not only children, are interested in the life of every favorite writer, his biography: when and where he was born, how he behaved in childhood and how he studied, and, of course, how he became a writer.
To begin with, I will quote the words of V. Kataev himself:
“I was born in Ukraine. My childhood, adolescence and youth passed there. My father was a native Russian. Mother is a native Ukrainian. In my soul since the very early years“Ukrainian” and “Russian” are intertwined. Or rather, it’s not even intertwined, but completely merged.”
Valentin Petrovich Kataev was born in Odessa on January 28, 1897. He learned to read early. Shevchenko, Pushkin, Gogol, Nikitin, Koltsov, Tolstoy became his first favorite writers and teachers. This happened naturally and simply, perhaps even unnoticed by the future writer: he grew up in a family where they truly knew and loved classical literature. At the age of thirteen, Valya Kataev published his poem “Autumn” in a newspaper. His brother Zhenya was also passionately drawn to literature (later the wonderful Soviet writer Yevgeny Petrov - one of the creators of the novels “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf”).
Valentin Kataev grew up and matured as a person, citizen and writer in a turbulent historical era. Revolution of 1905, the beginning and collapse of the First World War, the Great October Revolution, the years of socialist construction and the first five-year plans - these are the events of which he was a witness or participant and which later formed the basis of many of his books.
Big role in creative biography Valentin Kataev played such outstanding masters of our culture, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ivan Bunin, Demyan Bedny, Maxim Gorky, Alexei Tolstoy, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Eduard Bagritsky, Yuri Olesha, with whom different years life confronted the writer. They were true friends V. Kataev, his good advisers and teachers.
Valentin Kataev wrote the story “Son of the Regiment” in 1944, during the days of the Patriotic War of our people against the Nazi invaders. Remembering this time, Valentin Petrovich said: “Always and everywhere, in the most critical moments Soviet writers were with the people. They shared with millions of Soviet people the hardships and deprivations of the difficult war years.”
War correspondent for the newspapers Pravda and Krasnaya Zvezda, writer Valentin Kataev himself walked and drove thousands of kilometers of front-line roads.
The war brought our country a lot of grief, troubles and misfortunes. It devastated tens of thousands of cities and villages. It made terrible sacrifices: twenty million Soviet people, more than the population of other states, died in that war. The war deprived thousands of children of their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and older brothers. But our people won this war, they won because they showed the greatest endurance, courage and bravery. He won because he could not help but win. "Victory or death!" - our people said in those years. And they went to their death so that the others who survived would win. It was a fair struggle for happiness and peace on earth.
The story “Son of the Regiment” returns the reader to the difficult, heroic events of the war years, which today’s children know only from textbooks and the stories of their elders. But textbooks don’t always talk about this in an interesting way, and elders don’t always like to remember the war: these memories are too sad...
After reading this story, you will learn about the fate of a simple village boy, Vanya Solntsev, from whom the war took everything: family and friends, home and childhood itself. You will learn how, having become a brave intelligence officer, Vanya took revenge on the Nazis for his and people's grief. Together with Vanya Solntsev you will go through many trials and experience the joy of heroism in the name of victory over the enemy. You will meet wonderful people, soldiers of our army - Sergeant Egorov and Captain Enakiev, gunner Kovalev and Corporal Bidenko, who not only helped Vanya become a brave intelligence officer, but also raised him in best qualities a real person. And, after reading the story “Son of the Regiment,” you, of course, will understand that a feat is not just courage and heroism, but a big one, great work, iron discipline, inflexibility of will and, most importantly, great love to your homeland...
Valentin Kataev's stories have been around for many decades. Over the years, they have been read and loved by millions of readers not only in our country, but also abroad. Loved it, like many other books by Valentin Kataev - great writer, artist, master of words. And if you have not yet read everything from Kataev’s works, then you can only envy you: you have a lot of good and joyful things ahead.
Sergey Baruzdin
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The given introductory fragment of the book Son of the Regiment (V.P. Kataev, 1944) provided by our book partner -
Valentin Petrovich Kataev.
Son of the regiment.
Dedicated to Zhenya and Pavlik Kataev
Valentin Petrovich Kataev wrote his story “Son of the Regiment” in 1944, during the days of the Great Patriotic War of our people against the fascist invaders. More than thirty years have passed since then. We remember our great victory with pride.
The war brought our country a lot of grief, troubles and misfortunes. She destroyed hundreds of cities and sows. She destroyed millions of people. She deprived thousands of children of their fathers and mothers. But Soviet people won this war. He won because he was completely devoted to his homeland. He won because he showed a lot of endurance, courage and bravery. He won because he could not help but win: it was a just war for happiness and peace on earth.
The story “Son of the Regiment” will take you, young reader, back to the difficult but heroic events of the war years, which you know about only from textbooks and the stories of your elders. She will help you see these events as if with your own eyes.
You will learn about the fate of a simple peasant boy, Vanya Solntsev, from whom the war took everything: family and friends, home and childhood itself. Together with him you will go through many trials and experience the joy of exploits in the name of victory over the enemy. You will meet wonderful people - soldiers of our army, Sergeant Egorov and Captain Enakiev, gunner Kovalev and Corporal Bidenko, who not only helped Vanya become a brave intelligence officer, but also brought up in him the best qualities of a real Soviet man. And, after reading the story, you, of course, will understand that a feat is not just courage and heroism, but also great work, iron discipline, inflexibility of will and great love for the Motherland.
The story “Son of the Regiment” was written by a great Soviet artist, a wonderful master of words. You will read it with interest and excitement, because it is a truthful, fascinating and vivid book.
The works of Valentin Petrovich Kataev are known and loved by millions of readers. You probably also know his books “The Lonely Sail Whitens”, “I am the Son of the Working People”, “A Farm in the Steppe”, “For the Power of the Soviets”... And if you don’t know, then you will definitely meet them - it will be a good and joyful meeting.
The books of V. Kataev will tell you about the glorious revolutionary deeds of our people, about the heroic youth of your fathers and mothers, and will teach you to love our beautiful homeland- The Land of the Soviets.
Sergey Baruzdin
It was the middle of a dead autumn night. It was very damp and cold in the forest. A thick fog rose from the black forest swamps, littered with small brown leaves.
The moon was overhead. It shone very strongly, but its light barely penetrated the fog. The moonlight stood near the trees in long, slanting ledges, in which, magically changing, strands of swamp vapors floated.
The forest was mixed. That's in the lane moonlight an impenetrably black silhouette of a huge spruce tree appeared, looking like a multi-story tower; then suddenly a white colonnade of birches appeared in the distance; then in the clearing, against the background of the white, moonlit sky, which had fallen into pieces like curdled milk, bare aspen branches were subtly depicted, sadly surrounded by a rainbow glow.
And everywhere, where the forest was thinner, white canvases of moonlight lay on the ground.
In general, it was beautiful with that ancient, wondrous beauty that always says so much to the Russian heart and makes the imagination draw fabulous paintings: gray wolf, carrying Ivan Tsarevich in a small hat on one side and with a Firebird feather in a scarf in his bosom, huge mossy paws of a goblin, a hut on chicken legs - and you never know what else!
But least of all in this dark, dead hour, three soldiers returning from reconnaissance thought about the beauty of the Polesie thicket.
They spent more than a day behind German lines, carrying out a combat mission. And this task was to find and mark on the map the location of enemy structures.
The work was difficult and very dangerous. We crawled almost the entire time. Once I had to lie motionless for three hours in a row in a swamp - in cold, stinking mud, covered with raincoats, covered with yellow leaves on top.
We dined on crackers and cold tea from flasks.
But the hardest thing was that I never managed to smoke. And, as you know, it is easier for a soldier to do without food and without sleep than without taking a puff of good, strong tobacco. And, as luck would have it, all three soldiers were heavy smokers. So, although the combat mission was completed as well as possible and in the senior’s bag there was a map on which more than a dozen thoroughly explored German batteries were marked with great accuracy, the scouts felt irritated and angry.
The closer it was to its leading edge, the more I wanted to smoke. IN similar cases As you know, a strong word or a funny joke helps a lot. But the situation demanded complete silence. It was impossible not only to exchange a word, but even to blow your nose or cough: every sound was heard unusually loudly in the forest.
The moon also got in the way. We had to walk very slowly, in single file, about thirteen meters apart from each other, trying not to fall into the streaks of moonlight, and stop and listen every five steps.
The elder walked ahead, giving the command with a careful movement of his hand: raise his hand above his head - everyone immediately stopped and froze; stretches his arm to the side with an inclination towards the ground - everyone at the same second quickly and silently lay down; waves his hand forward - everyone moved forward; will show back - everyone slowly backed away.
Although no more than two kilometers remained to the front line, the scouts continued to walk as carefully and prudently as before. Perhaps now they walked even more carefully, stopping more often.
They had entered the most dangerous part of their journey.
Yesterday evening, when they went out on reconnaissance, there were still deep German rear areas here. But the situation has changed. In the afternoon, after the battle, the Germans retreated. And now here, in this forest, it was apparently empty. But it could only seem so. It is possible that the Germans left their machine gunners here. Every minute you could run into an ambush. Of course, the scouts - although there were only three of them - were not afraid of an ambush. They were careful, experienced and ready to take on a fight at any moment. Each had a machine gun, a lot of ammunition and four hand grenades. But the fact of the matter is that there was no way to accept the fight. The task was to go over to your side as quietly and unnoticed as possible and quickly deliver to the commander of the control platoon a precious map with spotted German batteries. The success of tomorrow's battle largely depended on this. Everything around was unusually quiet. It was a rare moment of calm. Apart from a few distant cannon shots and a short machine-gun burst somewhere to the side, one would think that there was no war in the world.
However, an experienced soldier would have immediately noticed thousands of signs that it was here, in this quiet, remote place, that war was lurking.
The red telephone cord, slipping imperceptibly under my foot, indicated that somewhere nearby was an enemy command post or outpost. Several broken aspens and dented bushes left no doubt that a tank or self-propelled gun had recently passed through here, and the faint, not yet weathered, special, alien smell of artificial gasoline and hot oil showed that this tank or self-propelled gun was German.
In some places, carefully lined spruce branches, stood like woodpiles of firewood, stacks of mines or artillery shells. But since it was not known whether they were abandoned or specially prepared for tomorrow’s battle, it was necessary to move past these stacks with special caution.
Vanya Solntsev was found by scouts returning from a mission through a damp autumn forest. They heard a “strange, quiet, intermittent sound like nothing else,” followed it and came across a shallow trench. A boy slept in it, small and emaciated. The boy cried in his sleep. It was these sounds that attracted the attention of the scouts.
The scouts belonged to the artillery battery, commanded by Captain Enakiev, a conscientious, accurate, prudent and unyielding man. Vanya ended up there. Vanya ended up in the forest, located almost on the front line, after much ordeal. The boy's father died at the beginning of the war. The mother was killed by the Germans, to whom the woman did not want to give her only cow. When grandma and younger sister Vani died of hunger, the boy went to beg in the surrounding villages. He was captured by gendarmes and sent to a children's detention center, where Vanya almost died from typhus and scabies. Having escaped from the detention center, the boy hid in the forests for two years, hoping to cross the front line and get to ours. In the canvas bag of the overgrown and wild Vanya, they found a sharpened nail and a torn primer. Solntsev told the scouts that he was twelve years old, but the boy was so emaciated that he looked no older than nine.
Captain Enakiev could not leave the boy at the battery. Looking at Vanya, he remembered his family. His mother, wife and little son were killed three years ago during an air raid on the way to Minsk. The captain decided to send the boy to the rear. Vanya Solntsev, unaware of this decision, was blissful. He was accommodated in a wonderful tent with two intelligence officers, Vasily Bidenko and Kuzma Gorbunov, and fed an unusually tasty dish of potatoes, onions and pork stew with spices. The owners of this tent were bosom friends and were famous throughout the battery for their thriftiness and thriftiness. Corporal Bidenko, the “bony giant,” was a Donbass miner. Corporal Gorbunov, a “smooth, well-fed and chubby” hero, worked as a lumberjack in Transbaikalia before the war. Both giants sincerely fell in love with the boy and began to call him a shepherd boy.
Vanya was greatly disappointed when he learned about the captain’s decision! Bidenko, who was considered the most experienced intelligence officer in the battery, was assigned to take the boy to the children's reception center. Bidenko was absent for a day, during which the front line moved far to the west. The corporal appeared gloomy and silent in the new dugout, which the scouts had occupied. After numerous questions, he admitted that Vanya ran away from him. The details of this “unprecedented” escape became known only after some time.
For the first time, Vanya escaped from the corporal, jumping at full speed over the high side of the truck. Bidenko found the boy only in the evening. Vanya did not run from the corporal through the forest, but simply climbed a tall tree. So the scout would not have found the boy if the primer from Vanya’s torn bag had not fallen right on his head. Bidenko caught another ride. Getting into the truck, the scout tied a rope to the boy’s hand, and held the other end tightly in his fist. From time to time, Bidenko woke up and tugged at the rope, but the boy was fast asleep and did not respond. Already in the morning it turned out that the rope was tied not to Vanya’s hand, but to a thick boot, elderly woman- a military surgeon who was also riding in the truck.
Vanya wandered for two days “along some new military roads and units unknown to him, through burnt villages” in search of the coveted scout tent. The fact that he was sent to the rear seemed to the boy a misunderstanding that could easily be resolved, just find that same captain Enakiev. And I found it. Not knowing that he was talking to the captain himself, the boy told him how he escaped from Bidenko and complained that the strict commander Enakiev did not want to accept him as his “son.” The captain brought the boy back to the scouts. “So Vanya’s fate turned out magically three times in such a short time.”
The boy settled with the scouts. Soon, Bidenko and Gorbunkov were given the task: before the battle, to scout out the location of German reserves and find good positions for fire platoons. Without the knowledge of the captain, the scouts decided to take Vanya with them, since he had not yet received his uniform and still resembled a shepherd boy. Vanya knew this area well and was supposed to serve as a guide, but within a few hours the boy disappeared. Vanya decided to take the initiative, and he himself marked the bridges and fords of the small river. He drew the map in his old primer. The Germans caught him doing this. Gorbunov sent his comrade to the unit, and he stayed to help out the shepherd boy. Having learned about such arbitrariness, Captain Enakiev, in a rage, threatened to put the scouts on trial and was going to send a whole detachment to Vanya’s rescue. It would have been bad for the boy if our troops had not launched an offensive. Hastily retreating, the Germans forgot about the young spy, and Vanya again ended up with his own.
After this incident, Vanya was washed in a bathhouse, cut his hair, given uniforms and “put on full pay.” “Vanya had the lucky ability to please people at first sight.” Captain Enakiev also fell for the boy's charm. The scouts loved Vanya too “cheerfully”, and in the captain’s soul the boy awakened deeper feelings - he reminded Yenakiev of his deceased son. The captain decided to “get closely involved with Vanya Solntsev” and appointed the boy as his contact. “With his characteristic thoroughness, Captain Enakiev drew up a plan for the upbringing” of Vanya. First of all, the boy had to “gradually fulfill the duties of all gun crew numbers.” For this purpose, Vanya was assigned as a reserve number to the first gun of the first platoon.
The gunmen already knew everything about the boy and willingly accepted him into their close family. This gun crew was famous not only for the best accordion player in the division, but also for the most skillful gunner Kovalev, Hero Soviet Union. It was from the gunner that Vanya learned that our troops had approached the German border.
Meanwhile, Enakiev's division was preparing for battle. They were supposed to be supported by an infantry division, but Yenakiev did not like something in the plans of his friend, an infantry captain. The Germans may have had spare parts, but this was not proven, so Enakiev accepted this plan. Before the battle, the captain visited the first gun and admitted to the old gunner that he was going to officially adopt Vanya Solntsev.
Captain Enakiev's premonitions did not deceive him. The Germans actually had fresh forces, with the help of which they surrounded the infantry units. The captain ordered the first platoon of his battery to move forward and cover the flanks of the infantry. Afterwards he remembered that Vanya was in this particular platoon, but did not cancel the order. Soon the captain himself joined the crew of the first gun, which found itself in the very epicenter of the battle. The Germans retreated, and the first gun moved further and further. Suddenly German tanks entered the battle. Then Captain Enakiev remembered Van. He tried to send the boy to the rear, but he flatly refused. Then the captain resorted to a trick. He wrote something on a piece of paper, put the note in an envelope and told Vanya to take the message to the chief of staff at the division command post.
Having delivered the package, Vanya returned back. He did not know that everything was already over - the Germans continued to press, and Captain Enakiev “called the fire of the division’s batteries onto himself.” The entire crew of the first gun was killed, including the captain. Before his death, Enakiev managed to write a letter in which he said goodbye to the entire battery and asked to be buried in his native land. He asked to take care of Van, to make him a good soldier and a worthy officer.
Enakiev’s requests were fulfilled. After the solemn funeral, Corporal Bidenko took Vanya Solntsev to study at the Suvorov Military School in one ancient Russian city.
Current page: 1 (book has 3 pages in total)
Valentin Petrovich Kataev
Son of the regiment
Dedicated to Zhenya and Pavlik Kataev
1
It was the middle of a dead autumn night. It was very damp and cold in the forest. A thick fog rose from the black forest swamps, littered with small brown leaves.
The moon was overhead. It shone very strongly, but its light barely penetrated the fog. The moonlight stood near the trees in long, slanting ledges, in which, magically changing, strands of swamp vapors floated.
The forest was mixed. Now, in the strip of moonlight, the impenetrably black silhouette of a huge spruce tree appeared, looking like a multi-story tower; then suddenly a white colonnade of birch trees appeared in the distance; then in the clearing, against the background of the white, moonlit sky, which had fallen into pieces like curdled milk, bare aspen branches were subtly depicted, sadly surrounded by a rainbow glow.
And everywhere, where the forest was thinner, white canvases of moonlight lay on the ground.
In general, it was beautiful with that ancient, wondrous beauty that always says so much to the Russian heart and makes the imagination draw fabulous pictures: a gray wolf carrying Ivan Tsarevich in a small cap on one side and with a Firebird feather in a scarf in his bosom, huge mossy the paws of a devil, a hut on chicken legs - and you never know what else!
But least of all in this dark, dead hour, three soldiers returning from reconnaissance thought about the beauty of the Polesie thicket.
They spent more than a day behind German lines, carrying out a combat mission. And this task was to find and mark on the map the location of enemy structures.
The work was difficult and very dangerous. We crawled almost the entire time. Once I had to lie motionless for three hours in a row in a swamp - in cold, stinking mud, covered with raincoats, covered with yellow leaves on top.
We dined on crackers and cold tea from flasks.
But the hardest thing was that I never managed to smoke. And, as you know, it is easier for a soldier to do without food and without sleep than without taking a puff of good, strong tobacco. And, as luck would have it, all three soldiers were heavy smokers. So, although the combat mission was completed as well as possible and in the senior’s bag there was a map on which more than a dozen thoroughly explored German batteries were marked with great accuracy, the scouts felt irritated and angry.
The closer it was to its leading edge, the more I wanted to smoke. In such cases, as you know, a strong word or funny joke. But the situation demanded complete silence. It was impossible not only to exchange a word, but even to blow your nose or cough: every sound was heard unusually loudly in the forest.
The moon also got in the way. We had to walk very slowly, in single file, about thirteen meters apart from each other, trying not to fall into the streaks of moonlight, and stop and listen every five steps.
The elder walked ahead, giving a command with a careful movement of his hand: raise his hand above his head - everyone immediately stopped and froze; stretches his arm to the side with an inclination towards the ground - everyone at the same second quickly and silently lay down; waves his hand forward - everyone moved forward; will show back - everyone slowly backed away.
Although no more than two kilometers remained to the front line, the scouts continued to walk as carefully and prudently as before. Perhaps now they walked even more carefully, stopping more often.
They had entered the most dangerous part of their journey.
Yesterday evening, when they went out on reconnaissance, there were still deep German rear areas here. But the situation has changed. In the afternoon, after the battle, the Germans retreated. And now here, in this forest, it was apparently empty. But it could only seem so. It is possible that the Germans left their machine gunners here. Every minute you could run into an ambush. Of course, the scouts - although there were only three of them - were not afraid of an ambush. They were careful, experienced and ready to take on a fight at any moment. Each had a machine gun, a lot of ammunition and four hand grenades. But the fact of the matter is that there was no way to accept the fight. The task was to go over to one’s side as quietly and unnoticed as possible and quickly deliver to the control platoon commander a precious map with pinpointed German batteries. The success of tomorrow's battle largely depended on this. Everything around was unusually quiet. It was a rare moment of calm. Apart from a few distant cannon shots and a short machine-gun burst somewhere to the side, one would think that there was no war in the world.
However, an experienced soldier would have immediately noticed thousands of signs that it was here, in this quiet, remote place, that war was lurking.
The red telephone cord, slipping imperceptibly under my foot, indicated that somewhere nearby was an enemy command post or outpost. Several broken aspens and dented bushes left no doubt that a tank or self-propelled gun had recently passed through here, and the faint, not yet weathered, special, alien smell of artificial gasoline and hot oil showed that this tank or self-propelled gun was German.
In some places, carefully lined with spruce branches, stacks of mines or artillery shells stood like woodpiles. But since it was not known whether they were abandoned or specially prepared for tomorrow’s battle, it was necessary to move past these stacks with special caution.
Occasionally the road was blocked by the trunk of a hundred-year-old pine tree broken by a shell. Sometimes the scouts came across a deep, winding passage of communication or a solid commander's dugout, six steps deep, with a door facing west. And this door, facing west, eloquently said that the dugout was German, not ours. But whether it was empty or whether there was someone in it was unknown.
Often the foot stepped on an abandoned gas mask, on a German helmet crushed by the explosion.
In one place in a clearing, illuminated by smoky moonlight, the scouts saw a huge crater from an aerial bomb among the trees scattered in all directions. In this crater lay several German corpses with yellow faces and blue eyes.
A flare took off once; it hung over the tops of the trees for a long time, and its floating blue light, mixed with the smoky light of the moon, completely illuminated the forest. Each tree cast a long, sharp shadow, and it looked as if the forest around was on stilts. And until the rocket went out, three soldiers stood motionless among the bushes, looking like half-leafed bushes in their spotted, yellow-green raincoats, from under which machine guns protruded. So the scouts slowly moved towards their location.
Suddenly the elder stopped and raised his hand. At the same moment, the others also stopped, not taking their eyes off their commander. The elder stood for a long time, throwing his hood back from his head and turning his ear slightly in the direction from which he thought he heard a suspicious rustling sound. The eldest was a young man of about twenty-two. Despite his youth, he was already considered a seasoned soldier at the battery. He was a sergeant. His comrades loved him and at the same time were afraid of him.
The sound that attracted the attention of Sergeant Egorov - that was the surname of the senior - seemed very strange. Despite all his experience, Egorov could not understand its character and significance.
"What could it be?" - thought Yegorov, straining his ears and quickly turning over in his mind all the suspicious sounds that he had ever heard during night reconnaissance.
"Whisper! No. The cautious rustle of a shovel? No. File squealing? No".
A strange, quiet, intermittent sound unlike anything was heard somewhere very close, to the right, behind a juniper bush. It seemed like the sound was coming from somewhere underground.
After listening for another minute or two, Egorov, without turning around, gave a sign, and both scouts slowly and silently, like shadows, approached him closely. He pointed with his hand in the direction where the sound was coming from and motioned to listen. The scouts began to listen.
- Do you hear? – Yegorov asked with his lips alone.
“Hear,” one of the soldiers answered just as silently.
Egorov turned his thin body towards his comrades dark face, sadly illuminated by the moon. He raised his boyish eyebrows high.
- I don’t understand.
For some time the three of them stood and listened, putting their fingers on the triggers of their machine guns. The sounds continued and were just as incomprehensible. For one moment they suddenly changed their character. All three thought they heard singing coming out of the ground. They looked at each other. But immediately the sounds became the same.
Then Egorov signaled to lie down and lay down on his stomach on the leaves, already gray with frost. He took the dagger into his mouth and crawled, silently pulling himself up on his elbows, on his belly.
A minute later he disappeared behind a dark juniper bush, and after another minute, which seemed long, like an hour, the scouts heard a thin whistling. It meant that Yegorov was calling them to him. They crawled and soon saw the sergeant, who was kneeling, looking into a small trench hidden among the junipers.
From the trench one could clearly hear muttering, sobbing, and sleepy moans. Without words, understanding each other, the scouts surrounded the trench and stretched out the ends of their raincoats with their hands so that they formed something like a tent that did not let in the light. Egorov lowered his hand with an electric flashlight into the trench.
The picture they saw was simple and at the same time terrible.
A boy was sleeping in the trench.
With his hands clenched on his chest, his bare feet dark as potatoes tucked in, the boy lay in a green, stinking puddle and was heavily delirious in his sleep. His bare head, overgrown with long-uncut, dirty hair, was awkwardly thrown back. The thin throat trembled. Hoarse sighs flew out of a sunken mouth with fever-scarred, inflamed lips. There was muttering, fragments of unintelligible words, and sobbing. Protruding eyelids closed eyes were of an unhealthy, anemic color. They seemed almost blue, like skim milk. Short but thick eyelashes stuck together in arrows. The face was covered with scratches and bruises. A clot of dried blood was visible on the bridge of his nose.
The boy was sleeping, and reflections of the nightmares that haunted the boy in his sleep ran convulsively across his exhausted face. Every minute his face changed expression. Then it froze in horror; then inhuman despair distorted him; then sharp, deep features of hopeless grief erupted around his sunken mouth, his eyebrows rose like a house and tears rolled from his eyelashes; then suddenly the teeth began to grind furiously, the face became angry, merciless, the fists clenched with such force that the nails dug into the palms, and dull, hoarse sounds flew out of the tense throat. And then suddenly the boy would fall into unconsciousness, smile with a pitiful, completely childish and childishly helpless smile and begin to very weakly, barely audibly sing some kind of unintelligible song.
The boy's sleep was so heavy, so deep, his soul, wandering through the torments of dreams, was so far from his body that for some time he did not feel anything: neither the gaze of the scouts looking at him from above, nor the bright light of an electric flashlight, point-blank illuminating his face.
But suddenly the boy seemed to be hit from the inside, thrown up. He woke up, jumped up, and sat down. His eyes flashed wildly. In an instant, he pulled out a large sharpened nail from somewhere. With a deft, precise movement, Egorov managed to grab the boy’s hot hand and cover his mouth with his palm.
- Quiet. “Ours,” Yegorov said in a whisper.
Only now the boy noticed that the soldiers’ helmets were Russian, their machine guns were Russian, their raincoats were Russian, and the faces bending towards him were also Russian, family.
A joyful smile flashed palely on his exhausted face. He wanted to say something, but managed to utter only one word:
And he lost consciousness.
2
The battery commander, Captain Enakiev, was sitting on a small plank platform built on the top of a pine tree, between strong branches. The site was open on three sides. On the fourth side, on the western side, several thick sleepers were placed on it to protect against bullets. A stereo tube was screwed to the top sleeper. Several branches were tied to her horns, so that she herself looked like a horned branch.
In order to get to the site, it was necessary to climb two very long and narrow stairs. The first, rather flat, reached about half the tree. From here it was necessary to climb the second staircase, almost vertical.
In addition to Captain Enakiev, there were two telephone operators on the site - one infantry, the other artillery - with their leather telephone sets hung on a scaly pine trunk, and the head of the combat area, commander of the rifle battalion Akhunbaev, also a captain.
Since there was no room for more than four people on the platform, the remaining two artillerymen stood on the stairs: one was the commander of the control platoon, Lieutenant Sedykh, and the other was Sergeant Yegorov, already familiar to us. Lieutenant Sedykh stood on the upper steps, resting his elbows on the boards of the platform, and Sergeant Yegorov stood lower, and his helmet touched the lieutenant’s boots.
The battery commander, Captain Enakiev, and the battalion commander, Captain Akhunbaev, were busy with a very urgent, very important and very painstaking task: they were orienting their maps on the ground, clarifying the data delivered by artillery reconnaissance. These cards, marked and marked with multi-colored pencils, lay nearby, spread out on the boards. Both captains were reclining on them with pencils, erasers and rulers in their hands.
Captain Akhunbaev, pushing his green helmet onto the back of his head and tilting his gloomy, almost brown broad forehead, with sharp, impatient movements of his thick fingers, he moved a transparent ruler across his map. He used either a red pencil or an eraser and at the same time quickly glanced sideways into Yenakiev’s face, as if saying: “Well, what are you stalling for, dear friend? Let's move on. Let's hurry up."
He, as always, got excited and did not hide his irritation well.
In these last hours, and maybe even minutes, before the fight everything seemed too slow to him. He was seething internally.
Captain Enakiev and Captain Akhunbaev were old comrades. It so happened that for the last two years they acted together in almost all battles. That’s how everyone in the division got used to it: where Akhunbaev’s battalion fights, that means Enakiev’s battery also fights.
Enakiev and Akhunbaev made a glorious journey shoulder to shoulder. They beat the Germans near Dukhovshchina, they beat them near Smolensk, together they surrounded Minsk, together they drove the enemy from native land. More than once, not twice, not even three times, our capital Moscow, on behalf of the Motherland, illuminated the evening clouds over the Kremlin with fiery volleys in honor of the valiant front where Akhunbaev’s battalion and Enakiev’s battery fought.
The fighting friends ate a lot of bread and salt together, at one camp table. They drank a lot of water from one camp flask. It happened that they slept next to each other on the ground, covered with one raincoat. They loved each other like brothers. However, they did not make the slightest concession to each other’s service, remembering well the saying that friendship is friendship, and service is service. And they never compromised their dignity in front of each other. And their characters were different.
Akhunbaev was hot-tempered, impatient, and bold to the point of insolence. Enakiev was also brave no less than his friend Akhunbaev, but at the same time he was cold, restrained, calculating, as befits a good artilleryman.
Now, transferring onto his map the data obtained by Enakiev’s scouts, Captain Akhunbaev was in a hurry to finish this matter and quickly release the messengers sent from each company for diagrams of the explored area: they stood below under the tree and waited.
The order to attack had not yet been received. But from many signs it could be concluded that it would begin very soon, and before it began, Akhunbaev wanted to be sure to visit the companies and personally check their combat readiness.
However, no matter how quickly Akhunbaev’s celluloid ruler slid across the map, no matter how quickly the red pencil drew circles, diamonds and crosses among the curly images of forests and blue veins of rivers, things were not moving nearly as quickly as the captain would have liked. Almost before every new symbol that Akhunbaev was going to put on the map, Captain Enakiev stopped him with a courteous but firm movement of a small, lean hand in a worn brown suede glove:
- I ask you to. Wait a minute, I want to check. Lieutenant Sedykh!
- Look at yourself. Square nineteen five. Forty-five meters north-northeast of a single tree. What did you notice there?
Without haste, but without delving either, Lieutenant Sedykh pulled the tablet toward him, which lay on the boards at the level of his chest, lowered his slightly swollen eyes, reddened from lack of sleep, and, coughing, said:
– A damaged tank, dug into the ground and turned by the enemy into a stationary firing point.
- How is this known?
- According to intelligence reports.
“That’s right, that’s right,” Captain Akhunbaev said quickly, impatiently untying and tying the ribbons of the raincoat around his neck. – My intelligence reports the same thing. This means there cannot be two opinions. Feel free to apply.
“Still, wait a minute,” said Captain Enakiev, after thinking.
He leaned over and looked down at the edge of the platform.
- Sergeant Egorov!
“Here, comrade captain,” Sergeant Yegorov responded from the stairs.
– What is that knocked out tank you have there on square nineteen-five? Are you not composing?
- No way.
– Have you seen it in person?
- Yes sir.
- With my own eyes?
- Yes, exactly, with my own eyes. We went there - I saw it on way back saw. It's in the same place.
- So what are they? It turns out they turned it into a stationary firing point?
- Yes sir. To a stationary firing point.
- How is this known?
“They are doing excavation work around it.
- Are they burying them?
- Yes sir.
- Or maybe they want to take him out?
- No way. They brought him ammunition in a lorry just when we were there.
– Did you see it yourself?
- Yes sir. With my own eyes. They were unloading boxes. That's when we spotted it.
- Fine. Nothing else.
- Exactly! Exactly! - Captain Akhunbaev exclaimed joyfully through his teeth and put a small red diamond on the map.
And then suddenly, clarifying the position of some target, Captain Enakiev, making his polite but firm stopping gesture, knelt down in front of the stereo tube and - as it seemed to Captain Akhunbaev, for a very long time - scoured the foggy, layered horizon, every now and then coping with card and applying a celluloid circle to it. At this time, Akhunbaev was ready to grind his teeth with impatience and did not grind only because he knew his friend too well. Creak or don't creak, it still won't help.
One glance at Captain Enakiev was enough, at his old, but exceptionally neat, well-fitting overcoat with black buttonholes and gold buttons, at his hard cap with a lacquer strap, a black band and a straight square visor, pulled slightly over his eyes, at his flask, neatly trimmed with soldier's cloth, on an electric flashlight attached to the second button of his overcoat, on his strong, but thin boots, polished to a shine in all weathers, in order to understand all the conscientiousness, all the precision and all the inflexibility of this man.
The morning was gray and cold. The frost that fell at dawn lay fragile on the ground and did not melt for a long time. It slowly evaporated in the damp blue air, cloudy like soapy water. The trees at the edge did not move. But this impression was deceptive. The top of the pine tree swayed in a circle, and the platform swayed along with it, as if it were a raft that was floating smoothly around a wide, slow whirlpool.
The air shuddered all the time from cannon shots and explosions. This constant and uneven state of the air could not only be felt. You could kind of see him. With each blow, the trees in the forest shook, and the yellow leaves began to fall thicker, spinning and swaying.
3
To an unaccustomed person it might seem that there was a big battle going on and that he was in the very center of this battle. In fact, it was an ordinary artillery firefight, not even very strong. Some battery, ours or German, wanting to shoot at a new target, fired several shells. This battery was immediately spotted by enemy observers, and immediately some special counter-battery platoon struck it from the depths. This platoon, in turn, began to be hunted. Thus, very soon such a mess was brewing in the area that you could at least plug your ears with cotton wool. From all sides guns of small calibers, even smaller calibers, medium calibers, larger calibers, finally large, very large, the largest, and sometimes super-powerful guns were firing, barely audible in the rear and suddenly, with an unexpected howl, grinding, toppling their colossal shells into some seemingly innocent forest, above which a rocky cloud, black as anthracite, and riddled with lightning in the middle, rose into the air along with the bushes and trees and fell down.
Sometimes, from somewhere, from an unexpected direction, a fragment would burst in, hit the ground with force, ricochet, spin, crackle, ring, whine like a top, and with a disgusting groan rush away, knocking branches and pine cones from the trees along the way.
However, the people working on the map at the top of the pine tree seemed to hear and see nothing of this. And only occasionally, when in some place the fire became especially frequent, the telephone operator turned the handle of his leather apparatus and said quietly:
- Give me Violet. Is this "Violet"? "Chair" says. Checking the line. What are you doing there?.. Is everything quiet yet? OK. Everything is quiet here too. Keep fighting. Goodbye.
When the work was finally finished, Captain Akhunbaev immediately cheered up. He quickly stuffed the map into his field bag, resolutely tied the ribbons of the raincoat around his short neck, jumped onto his short, strong, slightly crooked legs and shouted down to the messenger:
Then he looked at his watch:
- Check it out. I have nine sixteen. You?
“Nine fourteen,” said Captain Enakiev, glancing over his hand.
Captain Akhunbaev made a short, triumphant, guttural sound. His eyes narrowed, sparkling with glossy blackness.
- You're falling behind, Captain Enakiev.
- No way. I'm keeping up. I have it right. You are in a hurry... as usual.
- Zaitsev, exact time! – Akhunbaev shouted excitedly.
The telephone operator immediately called the regiment command post and reported that the time was nine hours and fourteen minutes.
“You took it, god of war,” Akhunbaev said peacefully and, putting his watch to Yenakiev’s, moved the hands. “Let it be your way this time.” Goodbye, battalion commander.
Roughly rustling his cloak, he, in one spirit, without making a single stop, went down past the artillerymen who were standing aside, down both stairs, threw the map to the adjutant, jumped on his horse and rushed off, showered with yellow leaves.
After that, Captain Enakiev removed the tight rubber belt from his notebook and moved to the stereo tube. The goals were written down in the book. All these targets were sighted. But Captain Enakiev wanted them to be targeted even better.
He wanted to ensure that, if necessary, his battery could immediately, from the very first shots, go to kill, without wasting precious time on re-shooting. “Going through the goals” was, of course, not difficult. But he was afraid that his battery, pushed far forward into the infantry line and well hidden, might reveal itself ahead of time. The whole task was precisely to strike completely unexpectedly, at the very last, decisive moment of the battle, and to strike where it was least expected. Such a place, according to Captain Enakiev, was on the right flank of the combat area, between the forks of two roads and the exit to a rather deep gully overgrown with young oak trees.
IN this moment there was nothing interesting about this place. It was deserted. There were no firing points or defensive structures on it. Usually on battlefields there are quite a lot of such uninteresting, unremarkable places. The battle passes them by without stopping. Captain Enakiev knew this, but he had a strong, precise imagination.
For the hundredth time, picturing the upcoming battle in all possible details of its development, Captain Enakiev invariably saw the same picture: Akhunbaev’s battalion breaks through the German defensive line and bends the right flank against a possible counterattack. Then he impatiently throws his center forward, consolidates himself on the defensive slope of the high-rise, opposite the fork in the road, and, gradually drawing up reserves, accumulates for a new, decisive blow on the road. It is not far from this place, between the fork in the road and the exit to the ravine, that Captain Akhunbaev stops. He must stop there, as the logic of the battle will require it: it will be necessary to replenish ammunition, pick up the wounded, put the companies in order, and most importantly, rebuild the battle formation in the direction of the next strike. And this requires, although not much, time. It is impossible that the Germans would not take advantage of this pause. Of course they will. They will throw away the tanks. This is the best time for a tank attack. They will suddenly throw out their tank reserve hidden in the beam. And Captain Enakiev had almost no doubt that German tanks would be hidden in the beam, although he had no positive information on this matter. This is what his imagination told him, based on experience, on a subtle understanding of maneuver and on that special, mathematical mindset that always distinguishes a good artillery officer, accustomed to quickly and accurately comparing facts and drawing unmistakable conclusions.
“Or maybe we should take a chance and try?” - Captain Enakiev asked himself, turning the stereo scope eyepieces over his eyes.
The blurry gray horizon brightened and became denser. The cloudy outlines of objects took on an extremely clear form. The panorama of the area magically came closer to the eyes and clearly stratified into several plans, protruding from one another, like theatrical scenery.
In the foreground, out of focus, the tops of the very forest where the pine tree with the observation post stood stood out dimly and strangely wavy. Even one branch of this pine tree, monstrously close, really stuck out in the eyes with huge clusters of needles and two huge cones.
Behind him was a strip of field. Along the lower edge of this field stretched with stereoscopic clarity wavy line our leading edge. All his structures were carefully camouflaged, and only a very experienced eye could reveal their presence. Captain Enakiev did not so much see as he guessed the places of embrasures, communication passages, and machine-gun nests.
Along the upper edge of the field, just as clearly and in just as much detail, but much smaller, German trenches stretched parallel to ours. And the dead space between them was so compressed, so reduced by optical approximation, that it seemed as if it did not exist at all.
Even further away, Captain Enakiev saw a watery panorama of the German rear. He walked along it casually. Bare groves, flattened swamps, hills, as if glued one on top of the other, and the ruins of houses quickly flashed by.
And finally, Captain Enakiev returned to the very place between the fork in the road and the narrow crack of the ravine, which was brought into his notebook under the name: "Rangefinder 17".
He peered intensely at this unremarkable, deserted place, and his imagination - for the umpteenth time this morning! - this place was inhabited by the moving chains of Akhunbaev and the small silhouettes of German tanks, which suddenly began to crawl out of the mysterious crack of the ravine one after another.
“Or is it better not to?” – thought Enakiev, trying to bring the focus of the stereo scope to this place as accurately as possible. It wasn't indecisiveness. It wasn't hesitation. No. He never hesitated. He did not hesitate now. He weighed. He wanted to find the most correct solution. He wanted to be fully aware of what was still more profitable for him: to shoot “target number seventeen” with the greatest accuracy, even if for this he had to take the risk of prematurely detecting his battery, or until last minute not to detect the battery, risking losing several minutes for adjustments at a critical, perhaps even the decisive moment of the battle.
But at that time voices were heard below, the stairs began to shake, the rattling jingle of spurs was heard, and a young officer, almost a boy, with a dark, snub-nosed face and very black, thick eyebrows, jumped out onto the landing, breathing heavily. It was the liaison officer. On his face, which tried its best to be formal and even stern, there was a hot, boyish smile.
He slammed his spurs together, briefly threw his hand towards the visor, as if he had torn it down with force, and handed the package to Captain Enakiev.
- When? – asked Enakiev.
- At nine o'clock forty-five minutes. The signal is two blue flares and one yellow. It is written there. May I go?
Enakiev looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock thirty-one minutes.
“Go,” he said.
The signal officer slammed his spurs, stretched out, threw his hand to the visor, tore it down with force, turned around with such precision and panache, as if he were not at the top of a tree, but in the canteen of an artillery school, and in one breath he poured down the stairs, tearing off his spurs on crossbars and cheerfully cursing.
- Lieutenant Sedykh! - said Enakiev.
- I'm here, comrade captain.
- You heard?
- Yes sir.
- The command post is here. Communication between me and all platoons is telephone. When moving forward, build up the wire without the slightest delay. Don’t tear yourself away from the platoons for even one second. In the event of a telephone connection failure, duplicate by radio in clear text. Under the commander of each company, appoint two people - one liaison officer, the other an observer. Report any changes in the situation immediately by wire, radio or rockets. Is the task clear?
- Yes sir.
- Any questions?
- No way.
- Take action.
- I obey.
Lieutenant Sedykh went down one step, but stopped:
- Comrade captain, allow me to report. It completely slipped my mind. What do you want to do with the boy?
- With which boy?
Captain Enakiev frowned, but immediately remembered:
They reported to him about the boy, but he had not yet made a decision.
- So what do you have with the boy? Where is he located?
- For now, with me, at the control platoon. From the scouts.
- Has the little one come to his senses?
- It’s like nothing.
-What is he saying?
- He says a lot of things. But Sergeant Egorov knows better.
- Let's get Egorova here.
- Sergeant Egorov! – Lieutenant Sedykh shouted down. - To the battery commander!
- Here! – Egorov immediately responded, and his helmet, covered with branches, appeared above the platform.
