171 siding of the Kirov railway. Quiet dawns of tragedy

literature_su_classics

Boris Vasiliev

And the dawns here are quiet...

At the 171st siding, twelve courtyards, a fire shed and a squat long warehouse, built at the beginning of the century from fitted boulders, survived. During the last bombing, the water tower collapsed, and trains stopped stopping here. The Germans stopped raids, but circled over the siding every day, and the command kept two anti-aircraft quads there just in case.

It was May 1942. In the west (on damp nights the heavy roar of artillery could be heard from there), both sides, having dug two meters into the ground, were finally stuck in trench warfare; in the east the Germans bombed the canal and the Murmansk road day and night; in the north there was a fierce struggle for sea routes; in the south, besieged Leningrad continued its stubborn struggle.

And here was a resort. The silence and idleness made the soldiers thrilled, as if in a steam room, and in twelve courtyards there were still enough young women and widows who knew how to extract moonshine almost from the squeak of a mosquito. For three days the soldiers slept and looked closely; on the fourth, someone’s name day began, and the sticky smell of local pervach no longer evaporated over the crossing.

The commandant of the patrol, the gloomy foreman Vaskov, wrote reports on command. When their number reached a dozen, the authorities gave Vaskov another reprimand and replaced the half-platoon, swollen with joy. For a week after this, the commandant somehow managed on his own, and then everything was repeated at first so accurately that the foreman eventually got around to rewriting the previous reports, changing only the numbers and surnames in them.

– You're doing nonsense! - thundered the major who arrived according to the latest reports. - The writings have been swindled! Not a commandant, but some kind of writer!..

– “Send in the non-drinkers,” Vaskov stubbornly insisted: he was afraid of any loud-mouthed boss, but he talked his way through like a sexton. - Non-drinkers and this... So, that means about the female gender.

– Eunuchs, or what?

– “You know better,” the foreman said cautiously.

– Okay, Vaskov!... - the major said, inflamed by his own severity. - There will be non-drinkers for you. And as for women, they will also do the same. But look, sergeant major, if you can’t cope with them either...

– “That’s right,” the commandant agreed woodenly. The major took away the anti-aircraft gunners who could not stand the test, and in parting he once again promised Vaskov that he would send those who would turn up their noses at skirts and moonshine more vividly than the foreman himself. However, it was not easy to fulfill this promise, since not a single person arrived in three days.

– The question is complex,” the apartment foreman explained to his landlady, Maria Nikiforovna. – Two departments are almost twenty people who don’t drink. Shake up the front, and I doubt it...

His fears, however, turned out to be unfounded, since already in the morning the owner reported that the anti-aircraft gunners had arrived. There was something harmful in her tone, but the sergeant-major couldn’t figure it out from his sleep, but asked about what was troubling him:

– Have you arrived with the commander?

– It doesn’t seem like it, Fedot Evgrafych.

– God bless! – The foreman was jealous of his commandant position. – Power to share is worse than nothing.

– “Wait to rejoice,” the hostess smiled mysteriously. “We will be happy after the war,” Fedot Evgrafych said reasonably, put on his cap and went out.

And he was taken aback: in front of the house there were two lines of sleepy girls. The sergeant major decided that he was imagining sleep and blinked, but the soldiers’ tunics were still sticking out smartly in places not provided for by the soldier’s regulations, and curls of all colors and styles impudently climbed out from under their caps.

– Comrade sergeant major, the first and second squads of the third platoon of the fifth company of a separate anti-aircraft machine gun battalion have arrived at your disposal to guard the facility,” the eldest reported in a dull voice. – Sergeant Kiryanova reports to the platoon commander.

– So-so,” the commandant said, not at all according to the regulations. - So we found non-drinkers...

He spent the whole day hammering with an ax: building bunks in the fire shed, since the anti-aircraft gunners did not agree to stay with their mistresses. The girls carried the boards, held them where they ordered, and chattered like magpies. The foreman gloomily remained silent: he was afraid for his authority.

– Out of favor without my saying a word,” he announced when everything was ready.

– Even for berries? – the redhead asked smartly. Vaskov had noticed her a long time ago.

– There are no berries yet,” he said.

– Can sorrel be collected? – Kiryanova asked. “It’s difficult for us without welding, Comrade Sergeant Major, we’re getting thin.”

Fedot Evgrafych looked doubtfully at the tightly stretched tunics, but allowed:

– Not further than the river. It will break through right in the floodplain. There was a moment of grace at the crossing, but this did not make it any easier for the commandant. The anti-aircraft gunners turned out to be noisy and cocky girls, and the foreman felt every second that he was visiting his own home: he was afraid to blurt out the wrong thing, to do the wrong thing, and there was now no question of entering somewhere without knocking, and, if When he forgot about it, the signal screech immediately threw him back to his previous position. Most of all, Fedot Evgrafych was afraid of hints and jokes about possible courtship, and therefore he always walked around staring at the ground, as if he had lost his salary for the last month.

– “Don’t worry, Fedot Evgrafych,” said the hostess, having observed his communication with his subordinates. “They call you an old man among themselves, so look at them accordingly.”

Fedot Evgrafych turned thirty-two this spring, and he did not agree to consider himself an old man. On reflection, he came to the conclusion that all these were measures taken by the hostess to strengthen her own positions: she had melted the ice of the commandant’s heart one spring night and now, naturally, sought to strengthen herself on the conquered lines.

At night, the anti-aircraft gunners excitedly fired from all eight barrels at passing German planes, and during the day they did endless laundry: some of their rags were always drying around the fire shed. The sergeant-major considered such decorations inappropriate and briefly informed Sergeant Kiryanov about this:

– Unmasks.

– “And there is an order,” she said without hesitation.

– What order?

– Corresponding. It states that female military personnel are allowed to dry clothes on all fronts.

The commandant said nothing: screw them, these girls! Just get in touch: they’ll be giggling until the fall...

The days were warm and windless, and there were so many mosquitoes that you couldn’t even take a step without a twig. But a twig is nothing, it’s still quite acceptable for a military man, but the fact that soon the commandant began wheezing and coughing at every corner, as if he really was an old man - that was completely out of place.

And it all started with the fact that on a hot May day he turned behind the warehouse and froze: a body so fiercely white, so tight, and even multiplied eightfold, splashed into his eyes that Vaskov was already in a fever: the entire first squad, led by the commander, junior sergeant Osyanina, was sunbathing on a government tarpaulin in what the mother gave birth in. And at least they would have screamed, perhaps, for the sake of decency, but no: they buried their noses in the tarpaulin, hid, and Fedot Evgrafych had to back away, like a boy from someone else’s garden. From that day on, he began coughing at every corner, like whooping cough.

And he singled out this Osyanina even earlier: strict. He never laughs, he just moves his lips a little, but his eyes remain serious. Osyanina was strange, and therefore Fedot Evgrafych carefully made inquiries through his mistress, although he understood that this assignment was not at all for her joy.

– “She’s a widow,” Maria Nikiforovna reported, pursing her lips a day later. - So it’s completely in the female rank: you can play games.

The foreman remained silent: you still can’t prove it to the woman. He took an ax and went into the yard: there is no better time for thoughts than to chop wood. But a lot of thoughts had accumulated, and they had to be brought into line.

Well, first of all, of course, discipline. Okay, the soldiers don’t drink, they don’t treat the residents nicely - that’s all true. And inside is a mess:

– Luda, Vera, Katenka - on guard! Katya is a breeder. Is this a team? The removal of guards is supposed to be done to the fullest extent, according to the regulations. And this is a complete mockery, it must be destroyed, but how? He tried to talk about this with the eldest, Kiryanova, but she had only one answer:

– And we have permission, Comrade Sergeant Major. From the commander. Personally.

The devils are laughing...

– Are you trying, Fedot Evgrafych?

I turned around: my neighbor was looking into the yard, Polinka Egorova. The most dissolute of the entire population: she celebrated her name day four times last month.

– Don’t bother too much, Fedot Evgrafych. Now you are the only one left with us, sort of like a tribe.

Laughs. And the collar is not fastened: she dumped the delights onto the fence like buns from the oven.

– Now you will walk around the yards like a shepherd. A week in one yard, a week in another. This is the agreement we women have about you.

– You, Polina Egorova, have a conscience. Are you a soldier or a lady? So lead accordingly.

– War, Evgrafych, will write everything off. And from soldiers and soldiers.

What a loop! It would be necessary to evict, but how? Where are they, the civil authorities? But she is not subordinate to him: he ventilated this issue with the loudmouth major.

Yes, it has gained about two cubic meters, no less. And each thought needs to be dealt with in a completely special way. Very special...

Still, it’s a big hindrance that he is a person with almost no education. Well, he knows how to write and read and knows arithmetic within four grades, because right at the end of this, the fourth, the bear broke his father. These girls would laugh if they knew about the bear! Well, this is necessary: not from gases to the world, not from a blade to a civilian, not from a kulak sawed-off shotgun, not even by his own death - the bear broke it! They must have only seen this bear in menageries...

You, Fedot Vaskov, have crawled out of a dark corner to become a commandant. And they, no matter how ordinary they are, are science: lead, quadrant, drift angle. There are seven classes, or even all nine, as you can see from the conversation. Subtract four from nine and five remains. It turns out that he is further behind them than he is...

The thoughts were gloomy, and this made Vaskov chop wood with particular fury. Who's to blame? Maybe that impolite bear...

It’s a strange thing: before that, he considered his life lucky. Well, it’s not like it turned out to be exactly twenty-one, but there was no point in complaining. Still, he graduated from the regimental school with his incomplete four classes and ten years later rose to the rank of sergeant major. There was no damage along this line, but from other ends, it happened that fate surrounded it with flags and hit it twice right at point-blank range with all the guns, but Fedot Evgrafych still stood. Resisted...

Shortly before the Finnish one, he married a nurse from the garrison hospital. I came across a living little woman: she would all like to sing and dance and drink wine. However, she gave birth to a boy. They called Igor: Igor Fedotich Vaskov. Then the Finnish war began, Vaskov left for the front, and when he returned back with two medals, he was shocked for the first time: while he was dying there in the snow, his wife ended up having an affair with the regimental veterinarian and left for the southern regions. Fedot Evgrafych divorced her immediately, demanded the boy through the court and sent him to his mother in the village. And a year later his little boy died, and from then on Vaskov smiled only three times: at the general who presented him with the order, at the surgeon who pulled out the shrapnel from his shoulder, and at his mistress Maria Nikiforovna, for her cleverness.

It was for that fragment that he received his current post. There was some property left in the warehouse; they did not post sentries, but having established a commandant’s position, they entrusted him with guarding that warehouse. Three times a day, the foreman walked around the facility, tried the locks, and made the same entry in the book that he himself kept: “The facility has been inspected. There are no violations.” And inspection time, of course.

Sergeant Major Vaskov served calmly. Quiet almost until today. And now…

The sergeant major sighed.

Of all the pre-war events, Rita Mushtakova most vividly remembered a school evening - a meeting with the border guard heroes. And although Karatsupa was not at this evening, and the dog’s name was not Hindu, Rita remembered this evening as if it had just ended and the shy lieutenant Osyanin was still walking nearby along the echoing wooden sidewalks of the small border town. The lieutenant was not yet a hero; he became part of the delegation by accident and was terribly shy.

Rita was also not a lively person: she sat in the hall, not participating in greetings or amateur performances, and would rather have agreed to fall through all the floors to the rat cellar than to be the first to speak with any of the guests under thirty. It’s just that he and Lieutenant Osyanin happened to be next to each other and sat, afraid to move and looking straight ahead. And then the school entertainers organized a game, and they got to be together again. And then there was a general phantom: to dance a waltz - and they danced. And then they stood at the window. And then... Yes, then he went to see her off.

And Rita cheated terribly: she took him the farthest road. But he was still silent and just smoked, each time timidly asking her permission. And this timidity made Rita’s heart drop straight to her knees.

They didn’t even say goodbye by hand: they simply nodded to each other, and that’s all. The lieutenant went to the outpost and wrote her a very short letter every Saturday. And every Sunday she answered with long answers. This continued until the summer: in June he came to the town for three days, said that there was trouble at the border, that there would be no more vacations and therefore they needed to immediately go to the registry office.

Rita was not at all surprised, but there were bureaucrats at the registry office and refused to register, because she was five and a half months away from turning eighteen. But they went to the city commandant, and from him to her parents, and still achieved their goal.

“Boris Vasiliev And the dawns here are quiet. At the 171st crossing, twelve courtyards, a fire shed and a squat long warehouse built in..."

-- [ Page 1 ] --

Boris Vasiliev

And the dawns here are quiet...

At the 171st crossing, twelve yards survived, a fire shed and a squat

a long warehouse built at the beginning of the century from fitted boulders. Last

After the bombing, the water tower collapsed and trains stopped stopping here, the Germans

stopped the raids, but circled over the patrol every day, and the command just in case

By chance there were two anti-aircraft quadruples there.

It was May 1942. In the west (on damp nights the heavy roar of artillery could be heard from there), both sides, having dug two meters into the ground, were finally stuck in trench warfare;

in the east the Germans bombed the canal and the Murmansk road day and night; in the north there was a fierce struggle for sea routes; in the south, besieged Leningrad continued its stubborn struggle.

You're doing nonsense! - thundered the major who arrived according to the latest reports. - The writings have been swindled! Not a commandant, but some kind of writer!...

“Send in the non-drinkers,” Vaskov stubbornly insisted: he was afraid of any loud-mouthed boss, but he talked his way through like a sexton. - Non-drinkers and so on. So, about the female gender.

Eunuchs, or what?

“You know better,” the foreman said cautiously.

Okay, Vaskov!.. - the major said, inflamed by his own severity. - There will be non-drinkers for you. And as for women, they will also do the same. But look, sergeant major, if you can’t cope with them either.

“That’s right,” the commandant agreed woodenly. The major took away the anti-aircraft gunners who could not stand the test, and in parting he once again promised Vaskov that he would send those who would turn up their noses at skirts and moonshine more vividly than the foreman himself. However, it was not easy to fulfill this promise, since not a single person arrived in three days.

The question is complex,” the apartment foreman explained to his landlady, Maria Nikiforovna. - Two departments are almost twenty people who don’t drink. Shake up the front, and I doubt it.

His fears, however, turned out to be unfounded, since already in the morning the owner reported that the anti-aircraft gunners had arrived.

There was something harmful in her tone, but the sergeant-major couldn’t figure it out from his sleep, but asked about what was troubling him:

Have you arrived with the commander?

It doesn’t seem like it, Fedot Evgrafych.

God bless! - The foreman was jealous of his commandant position. - Power to share is worse than nothing.

“Wait to rejoice,” the hostess smiled mysteriously. “We’ll be happy after the war,” Fedot Evgrafych said reasonably, put on his cap and went out.

Comrade sergeant major, the first and second squads of the third platoon of the fifth company of a separate anti-aircraft machine gun battalion have arrived at your disposal to guard the facility,” the eldest reported in a dull voice. - Sergeant Kiryanova reports to the platoon commander.

So-so,” the commandant said, not at all according to the regulations. - So they found non-drinkers...

From the location without my word, not a foot,” he announced when everything was ready.

Even for berries? - the redhead asked smartly. Vaskov had noticed her a long time ago.

There are no berries yet,” he said.

Can sorrel be collected? - asked Kiryanova. “It’s difficult for us without welding, Comrade Sergeant Major, we’re getting thin.”

Fedot Evgrafych looked doubtfully at the tightly stretched tunics, but allowed:

Not further than the river. It will break through right in the floodplain. There was a moment of grace at the crossing, but this did not make it any easier for the commandant. The anti-aircraft gunners turned out to be noisy and cocky girls, and the foreman felt every second that he was visiting his own home:

he was afraid to blurt out the wrong thing, to do the wrong thing, and there was now no question of entering anywhere without knocking, and if he ever forgot about it, the signal screech immediately threw him back to his previous position. Most of all, Fedot Evgrafych was afraid of hints and jokes about possible courtship, and therefore he always walked around staring at the ground, as if he had lost his salary for the last month.

“Don’t worry, Fedot Evgrafych,” said the hostess, having observed his communication with his subordinates. - They call you an old man among themselves, so look at them accordingly.

The sergeant-major considered such decorations inappropriate and briefly informed Sergeant Kiryanov about this:

Unmasks.

“And there is an order,” she said without hesitation.

What order?

Corresponding. It states that female military personnel are allowed to dry clothes on all fronts.

The commandant said nothing: screw them, these girls! Just get in touch: they’ll be giggling until the fall...

“She’s a widow,” Maria Nikiforovna reported, pursing her lips a day later. - So it’s completely in the female rank: you can play games.

Well, first of all, of course, discipline. Okay, the soldiers don’t drink, they don’t treat the residents nicely - that’s all true.

And inside is a mess:

Luda, Vera, Katenka - on guard! Katya is a breeder. Is this a team? The removal of guards is supposed to be done to the fullest extent, according to the regulations. And this is a complete mockery, it must be destroyed, but how? He tried to talk about this with the eldest, Kiryanova, but she had only one answer:

And we have permission, Comrade Sergeant Major. From the commander. Personally.

They laugh, damn it.

Are you trying, Fedot Evgrafych?

I turned around: my neighbor was looking into the yard, Polinka Egorova. The most dissolute of the entire population: she celebrated her name day four times last month.

Don’t bother too much, Fedot Evgrafych. Now you are the only one left with us, sort of like a tribe.

Laughs. And the collar is not fastened: she dumped the delights onto the fence like buns from the oven.

Now you will walk around the yards like a shepherd. A week in one yard, a week in another. This is the agreement we women have about you.

You, Polina Egorova, have a conscience. Are you a soldier or a lady? So lead accordingly.

War, Evgrafych, will write everything off. And from soldiers and soldiers.

What a loop! It would be necessary to evict, but how? Where are they, the civil authorities? But she is not subordinate to him: he ventilated this issue with the loudmouth major.

Yes, it has gained about two cubic meters, no less. And each thought needs to be dealt with in a completely special way. Very special...

You, Fedot Vaskov, have crawled out of a dark corner to become a commandant. And they, no matter how ordinary they are, are science: lead, quadrant, drift angle. There are seven classes, or even all nine, as you can see from the conversation. Subtract four from nine - five remains. It turns out that he is further behind them than he himself is.

The thoughts were gloomy, and this made Vaskov chop wood with particular fury. Who's to blame? Maybe that impolite bear.

They called Igor: Igor Fedotich Vaskov. Then the Finnish war began, Vaskov left for the front, and when he returned back with two medals, he was shocked for the first time: while he was dying there in the snow, his wife ended up having an affair with the regimental veterinarian and left for the southern regions.

Fedot Evgrafych divorced her immediately, demanded the boy through the court and sent him to his mother in the village. And a year later his little boy died, and from then on Vaskov smiled only three times: at the general who presented him with the order, at the surgeon who pulled out the shrapnel from his shoulder, and at his mistress Maria Nikiforovna, for her cleverness.

It was for that fragment that he received his current post. There was some property left in the warehouse; no guards were posted, but having established a commandant’s position, they entrusted him with guarding that warehouse. Three times a day the foreman walked around the facility, tried the locks, and made the same entry in the book that he himself kept: “The facility has been inspected. There are no violations.” And the inspection time, of course.

Sergeant Major Vaskov served calmly. Quiet almost until today. And now.

The sergeant major sighed.

Rita was the first of their class to get married. And not for anyone, but for the red commander, and even the border guard. And there simply could not have been a happier girl in the world.

At the outpost she was immediately elected to the women's council and enrolled in all the circles. Rita learned to bandage the wounded and shoot, ride a horse, throw grenades and protect against gases.

A year later she gave birth to a boy (they named him Albert - Alik), and a year later the war began.

On that first day, she was one of the few who was not confused and did not panic. She was generally calm and reasonable, but then her calmness was explained simply: Rita sent Alik to her parents back in May and therefore could save other people’s children.

The outpost held out for seventeen days. Day and night, Rita heard distant shooting.

The outpost lived, and with it lived the hope that her husband was safe, that the border guards would hold out until the arrival of the army units and together with them they would return blow for blow - at the outpost they loved to sing: “Night came, and darkness hid the border, but no one will cross over, and we will not allow the enemy to stick his snout into our Soviet city." But days passed, and there was no help, and on the seventeenth day the outpost fell silent.

They wanted to send Rita to the rear, but she asked to go into battle. They drove her away, forced her into heated vehicles, but the persistent wife of the deputy head of the outpost, senior lieutenant Osyanin, appeared again at the fortified area headquarters every other day. In the end, she was hired as a nurse, and six months later she was sent to the regimental anti-aircraft school.

And senior lieutenant Osyanin died on the second day of the war in a morning counterattack. Rita found out about this already in July, when a border guard sergeant miraculously broke through from the fallen outpost.

The authorities valued the unsmiling widow of the hero-border guard: she noted it in orders, set it as an example, and therefore respected her personal request - to be sent, after graduating from school, to the site where the outpost stood, where her husband died in a fierce bayonet battle. The front here backed down a little: it caught on the lakes, covered itself with forests, climbed into the ground and froze somewhere between the former outpost and the town where Lieutenant Osyanin once met a student of the ninth "B" ...

Now Rita was happy: she had achieved what she wanted. Even the death of her husband faded into the most secret corner of her memory: she had a job, a responsibility, and very real goals for hatred. And she learned to hate quietly and mercilessly, and although her crew had not yet managed to shoot down an enemy plane, she still managed to flash a German balloon. He flushed and shrank; the spotter jumped out of the basket and fell like a stone.

Shoot, R and t a!. Shoot! - the anti-aircraft gunners shouted. And Rita waited, keeping her crosshairs focused on the falling point. And when the German pulled his parachute just before the ground, already thanking his German god, she smoothly pressed the trigger. A burst of four trunks completely cut the black figure, the girls screamed with delight, kissed her, and she smiled with a pasted-on smile. She was shaking all night. Platoon commander Kiryanova gave her tea and consoled her:

It will pass, Ritukha. When I killed the first one, I almost died, by God. I dreamed about a month, you bastard.

Kiryanova was a fighting girl: even in Finnish she crawled with an ambulance bag for more than one kilometer of the front line, she had an order. Rita respected her for her character, but did not become particularly close to her.

However, Rita generally kept herself apart: in her department there were entirely girls from the Komsomol. Not that younger, no: just green. They knew neither love, nor motherhood, nor grief, nor joy, they chatted about lieutenants and kisses, and now Rita was irritated by this.

Sleep!. - she said briefly after listening to another confession. “If I hear more about nonsense, I’ll have enough time for hours.”

It’s in vain, Ritukha,” Kiryanova lazily reproached. - Let them chat: it’s interesting.

Let them fall in love - I won’t say a word. And so, licking in the corners - I don’t understand this.

Show me an example,” Kiryanova smiled. And Rita immediately fell silent. She could not even imagine that this could happen: men did not exist for her. One was a man - the one who led the thinned outpost into the bayonet at the second dawn of the war.

A vein tied with a belt. Tightened to the very last hole.

Before May, the crew had a hard time: they fought for two hours with the nimble Messers. The Germans came out of the sun, dived on all fours, pouring fire heavily. They killed the carrier - a snub-nosed, ugly fat woman who always chewed something in secret - and lightly wounded two more. The unit commissioner arrived at the funeral, the girls roared loudly.

They gave a fireworks over the grave, and then the commissioner called Rita aside:

The department needs to be replenished. Rita remained silent.

You have a healthy team, Margarita Stepanovna. Women at the front, you know, are the object, so to speak, of close attention. And there are cases when they can’t stand it.

Rita remained silent again. The commissioner stomped around, lit a cigarette, and said in a muffled voice:

One of the staff commanders - a family one, by the way - got himself, so to speak, a girlfriend. A member of the Military Council, having recognized the colonel, took him into account, and ordered me to put this friend to work, so to speak. In a good team.

“Come on,” said Rita.

The next morning I saw her and fell in love: tall, red-haired, white-skinned. And the eyes are children's: green, round, like saucers.

Fighter Evgeniy Komelkova is at your disposal...

That day was a bathing day, and when their time came, the girls in the dressing room looked at the new girl as if it were a miracle:

Zhenya, you are a mermaid!

Zhenya, your skin is transparent!

Zhenya, let’s make a sculpture of you!

Zhenya, you can walk without bras!

Oh, Zhenya, we need you at the museum! Under glass on black arhat.

Unhappy woman! - Kiryanova sighed. - Packing such a figure into uniform would make it easier to die.

“Beautiful,” Rita corrected carefully. - Beautiful people are rarely happy.

Are you referring to yourself? - Kiryanova grinned. And Rita fell silent again: no, her friendship with the platoon commander Kiryanova did not work out. She never came out.

And she went out with Zhenya. Somehow, by itself, without preparation, without probing: Rita took it and told her her life. Partly I wanted to reproach, and partly I wanted to show and brag as an example. And Zhenya in response did not feel sorry or sympathize.

She said briefly:

This means that you also have a personal account. It was said that Rita - although she knew about the colonel thoroughly - asked:

And you too?

And I'm alone now. Mom, sister, brother - they all were killed with a machine gun.

Was there any shelling?

Execution. The families of the command staff were captured and subjected to machine gun fire. And the Estonian woman hid me in the house opposite, and I saw everything. All! Little sister was the last one to fall - they did it on purpose.

Listen, Zhenya, what about the colonel? - Rita asked in a whisper. - How could you, Zhenya.

But she could! - Zhenya shook her red hair defiantly. - Will you start teaching now or after lights out?

Zhenya's fate crossed out Rita's exclusivity, and - strange thing! - Rita seemed to have thawed a little, as if she had trembled somewhere, softened. She even laughed sometimes, even sang with the girls, but she was herself only when alone with Zhenya.

Red-haired Komelkova, despite all the tragedies, was extremely sociable and mischievous. Either for the amusement of the whole department he will drive some lieutenant to the point of numbness, then during a break he will dance a gypsy girl according to all the rules to the girl’s “la-la”, then suddenly he will start telling a novel - you will listen to him.

You should be on stage, Zhenya! - Kiryanova sighed. - Such a woman is disappearing!

And so Ritino’s carefully guarded loneliness ended: Zhenya shook everything up. In their department there was only one little thing, Galka Chetvertak. Thin, pointed-nosed, tow braids and a flat chest, like a boy’s. Zhenya scrubbed her in the bathhouse, styled her hair, adjusted her tunic - Jackdaw blossomed. And the eyes suddenly sparkled, and a smile appeared, and the breasts grew like mushrooms. And since this Galka did not leave Zhenya’s side any more, the three of them now became: Rita, Zhenka and Galka.

The news of the transfer from the front line to the site of the anti-aircraft gunners was met with hostility.

Only Rita said nothing: she ran to headquarters, looked at the map, and said:

Send my department.

The girls were surprised, Zhenya started a riot, but the next morning she suddenly changed:

I began to agitate for departure. Why, why - no one understood, but they fell silent: that means they had to, they believed Zhenya. The conversations immediately died down and people began to gather. And when they arrived at the crossing, Rita, Zhenya and Galka suddenly began drinking tea without sugar.

Three nights later, Rita disappeared from the location. She slipped out of the fire shed, crossed the sleepy siding like a shadow and melted into the alder thicket wet with dew. I walked along a stalled forest road onto the highway and stopped the first truck.

Are you going far, beauty? - asked the mustachioed foreman: at night cars went to the rear for supplies, and they were accompanied by people far from the combat and regulations, - Can you give me a lift to the city?

Hands were already reaching out of the car. Without waiting for permission, Rita stood on the wheel and instantly found herself at the top. They sat me down on a tarpaulin and threw on a padded jacket.

Take a nap, girl, for an hour. And in the morning I was there. - Lida, Raya - get dressed!

No one saw it, but Kiryanova found out: they reported. She didn’t say anything, she grinned to herself: “I got someone, proud girl. Maybe let her thaw out...”

And not a word to Vaskov. However, none of the girls was afraid of Vaskov, and Rita least of all. Well, a mossy stump is wandering around the crossing: there are twenty words in stock, and those are from the regulations. Who will take him seriously?

But uniform is uniform, especially in the army. And this form demanded that no one except Zhenka and Galka Chetvertak know about Rita’s night travels.

Sugar, biscuits, millet concentrate, and sometimes cans of stewed meat migrated to the town. Crazy with luck, Rita ran there two or three nights a week: she turned black and haggard.

Zhenya hissed reproachfully in her ear:

You've gone too far, mother! If you run into a patrol, or some commander becomes interested, you will burn.

Shut up, Zhenya, I'm lucky!

Her eyes are shining with happiness: can you really talk to someone like that seriously? Zhenya just got upset:

Oh, look, Ritka!

Rita quickly guessed from her glances and grins that Kiryanova knew about her travels. Those grins burned her, as if she was really betraying her senior lieutenant. She darkened and wanted to pull her back, but Zhenya didn’t let her.

She grabbed hold of her and dragged her to the side:

Let him, Rita, let him think what he wants!

Rita came to her senses: right. Let her make up any dirt, as long as she keeps quiet, doesn’t interfere, and doesn’t inform Vaskov. He'll bore you, he'll grind you down - you won't see the light. An example was: the foreman caught two girlfriends from the first squad across the river. For four hours - from lunch to dinner - I read morals: I quoted the charter by heart, instructions, instructions. He brought the girls to third tears: not only across the river - they swore off leaving the yard.

But Kiryanova was silent for now.

There were windless white nights. The long twilight, from dawn to dusk, breathed with a thick infusion of flowering herbs, and the anti-aircraft gunners sang songs near the fire shed until the second roosters. Rita now hid only from Vaskov, disappeared after two nights on the third shortly after dinner, and returned before getting up.

Rita loved these returns most of all. The danger of being caught by the patrol was already over, and now you could calmly splash with your bare feet in the painfully cold dew, throwing your boots tied with eyelets behind your back. Spank and think about the date, about the mother's complaints and about the next AWOL. And because she could plan the next date herself, without depending or almost not depending on the will of others, Rita was happy. But the war was going on, disposing of human lives at its own discretion, and the destinies of people were intertwined in a bizarre and incomprehensible way. And, deceiving the commandant of the quiet 171st patrol, junior sergeant Margarita Osyanina did not even know that the directive of the imperial SD service No. C219/702 with the stamp “ONLY FOR COMMAND” had already been signed and accepted for execution.

And the dawns here were quiet and quiet.

Rita spanked barefoot: her boots swayed behind her back. A dense fog crawled from the swamps, chilled her feet, settled on her clothes, and Rita thought with pleasure how she would sit down on a familiar tree stump before leaving, put on dry stockings and put on her shoes. And now I was in a hurry, because I had been catching a passing car for a long time. Sergeant Major Vaskov got up at the crack of dawn and immediately went to feel the locks on the warehouse. And Rita was just supposed to go there: her stump was two steps from the log wall, behind the bushes.

There are two turns left to the stump, then straight ahead, through the alder forest. Rita passed the first one and froze: there was a man standing on the road.

He stood looking back, tall, wearing a spotted raincoat that bulged like a hump on his back. In his right hand he held an oblong, tightly strapped package; a machine gun hung on his chest.

Rita stepped into the bush; shuddering, he showered her with dew, but she did not feel it. Almost without breathing, she looked through the still sparse foliage at the stranger, motionless, as if in a dream, standing in her way.

A second one came out of the forest: a little shorter, with a machine gun on his chest and with exactly the same bundle in his hand. They silently walked straight towards her, silently stepping on the dewy grass with their high laced boots.

Rita put her fist in her mouth and clenched it with her teeth until it hurt. Just don’t move, don’t scream, don’t rush through the bushes! They walked side by side: the last one touched his shoulder to the branch behind which she stood. They passed silently, soundlessly, like shadows. And they disappeared.

Rita waited - no one. She carefully slipped out, ran across the road, dived into a bush, and listened.

Gasping, she rushed forward: her boots hit her on her back.

Without hiding, she rushed through the village, banging on the sleepy, tightly locked door:

Comrade Commandant!... Comrade Sergeant Major!...

Finally they opened it. Vaskov stood on the threshold - wearing breeches, slippers on his bare feet, and a calico shirt with ties.

He blinked his sleepy eyes:

The Germans are in the forest!

So. - Fedot Evgrafych narrowed his eyes suspiciously: no other way, I’m playing t. - How do we know?

I saw it myself. Two. With machine guns, in camouflage capes.

No, he doesn't seem to be lying. The eyes are frightened.

Wait here.

The foreman rushed into the house. He pulled on his boots and threw on his tunic, in a hurry, as if there was a fire.

The hostess, wearing only a shirt, sat on the bed with her mouth open:

What is it, Fedot Evgrafych?

Nothing. It doesn't concern you.

He ran out into the street, tightening his belt with the revolver at his side. Osyanina stood in the same place, still holding her boots over her shoulder.

The foreman automatically glanced at her legs:

red, wet, last year's leaf stuck to my thumb. This means that she wandered around the forest barefoot, and wore her boots on her back: so, it means that now they are fighting.

Command - to the gun: combat alert! Kiryanov to me. Run!

They rushed in different directions: the girl - to the fire shed, and he - to the railway booth, to the telephone. If only there was a connection!...

- "Pine"! "Pine"!. Oh, you honest mother! Either they are sleeping or there is a breakdown. "Pine"!.

- "Pine" is listening.

Seventeen says. Let's go for the third one. Come on urgently, dammit!

Yes, don't yell. Chepe u n e g o.

Something wheezed and grunted for a long time in the receiver, then a distant voice asked:

Are you, Vaskov? What do you have there?

That's right, Comrade Three. The Germans are in the forest near the location. Discovered today in quantities d in y x.

Found by whom?

Junior Sergeant O syanina. Kiryanova came in, without a cap, by the way.

She nodded, as if at a party.

I raised the alarm, Comrade Three. I'm thinking of combing the forest.

Wait a minute, Vaskov. Here you need to think: if we leave the object without cover, they won’t pat it on the head either. What do they look like, your Germans?

He says in camouflage suits, with machine guns. Intelligence service.

Intelligence service? What is she supposed to do there, at your place, to scout? How do you sleep with your mistress in an embrace?

It’s always like this, Vaskov is always to blame. Everyone is getting even on Vaskov.

Why are you silent, Vaskov? What are you thinking about?

I think we need to catch it, Comrade Three. We haven't gone far yet.

You're right. Take five people from the team and blow before the trail goes cold.

Is Kiryanova there?

Here, comrade.

Give her the phone.

Kiryanova spoke briefly: she said “I’m listening” twice and nodded five times.

She hung up and hung up.

It was ordered to allocate five people at your disposal.

Give me the one you saw.

Osyanina will be the eldest.

Well, like this. Build people.

Built, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Build, nothing to say. One has hair like a mane down to her waist, the other has some papers in her head. Warriors! Chesh with such forest, catch the Germans with machine guns! And they, by the way, have only birthmarks, model 1891, fraction of the 30th year.

Zhenya, Galya, Liza. The foreman frowned:

Wait, Osyanina! We are going to catch Germans, not fish. So at least they knew how to shoot, or something.

Vaskov wanted to wave his hand, but caught himself:

Yes, here's another one. Maybe someone knows German?

What am I? What am I? You need to report!

Fighter Gurvich.

Oh-ho-ho! What do they say - hands up?

Hyundai xox.

Exactly,” the foreman waved his hand. - Well, come on, Gurvich...

These five lined up. Serious, like children, but no fear yet.

Refuel. Well, that means eating a lot. Put on proper shoes, get yourself in order, get ready. Forty minutes for everything. R-disperse!. Kiryanov and Osyanina are with me.

While the soldiers were having breakfast and preparing for the campaign, the sergeant-major took the non-commissioned officers to his place for a meeting. The hostess, fortunately, had already run off somewhere, but still hadn’t tidied up the bed: two pillows side by side, of course. Fedot Evgrafych treated the sergeants to stew and looked at an old three-verst map, worn out on the folds.

So, I met you on this road?

Here,” Osyanina’s finger lightly scratched the card. - And they passed me, towards the highway.

K sh about sse?. What were you doing in the forest at four in the morning? Osyanina remained silent.

Just on nightly errands,” Kiryanova said without looking.

Night? - Vaskov got angry: they’re lying! - I personally supplied you with a toilet for your nightly affairs. Or don't you fit in?

Both frowned.

You know, Comrade Sergeant Major, there are questions that a woman is not obliged to answer,” Kiryanova said again.

There are no women here! - the commandant shouted and even lightly tapped his palm on the table. - No! There are fighters and there are commanders, okay? The war is going on, and until it ends, everyone in the neuter gender will walk around.

That’s why your bed is still open, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Oh, what an ulcer this Kiryanovna is! One word: loop!

Let's go to the highway, you say?

Towards.

The devil should they do next to the highway: there is still forest on both sides of the Finnish, they will be pinched there quickly. No, comrades junior commanders, don’t take them to the highway. Yes, you slurp, slurp.

There are bushes and fog,” Osyanina said. - It seemed to me.

It was necessary to be baptized if it seemed so,” the commandant grumbled. - They have the bags, you say?

Yes. Probably heavy: they were carried in the right hand. Very neatly packaged.

The foreman rolled a cigarette, lit a cigarette, and walked around. Everything suddenly became clear to him, so clear that he even became shy.

I think, what did they carry? And if so, then their route is not on the highway at all, but on the railway. On the Kirov road, that is.

It’s not close to the Kirovskaya road,” Kiryanova said incredulously.

But forests. And the forests here are dangerous: an army can hide, let alone two people.

If so... - Osyanina became worried. - If so, then you need to inform the railway security.

Kiryanova will report,” Vaskov said. - My report is at twenty-thirty every day, call sign “17”. You eat, eat, Osyanina. You'll have to stomp all day.

Forty minutes later, the search group lined up, but only left after an hour and a half, because the foreman was strict and picky:

Take off your shoes!

And so it is: half have boots with thin stockings, and the other half have foot wraps wrapped around them like scarves. With such shoes you won’t fight much, because after three kilometers these warriors’ legs will be beaten to bloody blisters. Okay, at least their commander, junior sergeant Osyanina, is wearing the right shoes. However, why doesn’t he teach his subordinates?

For forty minutes I taught how to wrap foot wraps. And forty more - he forced me to clean rifles. They’re fine, if they haven’t bred woodlice, but how will they have to shoot?

The sergeant major devoted the rest of his time to a short lecture, introducing, in his opinion, the soldiers to the situation:

Don't be afraid of the enemy. He’s following our rear, which means he’s afraid himself. But don’t let him get close, because the enemy is still a healthy man and is armed specifically for close combat. If it happens that he is nearby, then you better hide. Just don’t run, God forbid: it’s a pleasure to hit someone running with a machine gun. Only go two at a time. Don't lag behind and don't talk along the way. If the road comes across, what should you do?

“We know,” said the redhead. - One is on the right, the other is on the left.

Secretly,” Fedot Evgrafych clarified. - The order of movement will be as follows: in front is the head patrol consisting of a junior sergeant and a soldier. Then, a hundred meters away, the main core: me. - he looked around his squad, - with a translator. A hundred meters behind us is the last couple. Walk, of course, not nearby, but at visual distance. In case of detection of an enemy or something unknown. Who can scream like an animal or like a bird?

They giggled, you fools.

They fell silent.

“I can,” Gurvich said timidly. - Like a donkey: e-a, e-a!

There are no donkeys here,” the foreman noted with displeasure. - Okay, let's learn to quack. Like ducks.

He showed it, and they laughed. Why they suddenly felt so happy, Vaskov didn’t understand, but he couldn’t hold back his smile either.

This is how the drake calls the duck,” he explained. - Come on, try it.

They quacked with pleasure. This redhead especially tried, Evgenia (oh, good girl, God forbid you fall in love, good!).

But, of course, Osyanina did it best:

capable, apparently. And another one is not bad, Lisa, or something. Stocky, dense, either in the shoulders or in the hips - you can’t tell which is wider. And the voice is famously faked. And nothing at all, this one will always come in handy: it’s healthy, even if you plow on it.

It’s not like the city residents - Galya Chetvertak and Sonya Gurvich, translator.

Let's go to Vop-lake. Look here. - They crowded around the map, breathing down their necks, into their ears: funny. - If the Germans go to the railway, they will not be able to avoid the lake. But they don’t know the shortest route: that means we’ll be there before them. We're about twenty versts from the place - we'll be there by lunchtime.

And we will have time to prepare, because the Germans, in a roundabout manner and in secret, have to walk no less than half a hundred. Is everything clear, comrade soldiers?

His fighters became serious:

It's clear...

They should sunbathe on their bodies and shoot at airplanes - this is war.

Junior Sergeant Osyanina to check supplies and readiness. We're leaving in fifteen minutes.

He left the soldiers: he had to run home. Even before this, the hostess had been instructed to collect the sidor, and there were some things that needed to be captured. The Germans are evil warriors, it’s only in the cartoons that they are beaten in batches. It was necessary to prepare.

Maria Nikiforovna collected what she ordered, even more: she put in some pieces of lard and some dried fish. I wanted to scold, but changed my mind: it’s like a crowd at a wedding. I put more cartridges for a rifle and a revolver in the sidor, grabbed a couple of grenades: you never know what could happen.

The hostess looked scared, quietly: her eyes were wet.

And she was reaching out, so completely reaching out to him, although she didn’t move from her place, that Vaskov couldn’t stand it, he put his hand on her head:

I'll be back the day after tomorrow. Or - the deadline is Wednesday.

I started crying. Eh, women, women, you unfortunate people! For men, this war is like a hare's smoke, and for the most part...

He went outside the outskirts and looked around at his “guard”: their rifles were almost dragging along the ground with their butts.

Vaskov sighed.

“Ready,” said Rita.

I appoint junior sergeant Osyanin as deputy for the entire operation.

I remind you of the signals: two cracks - attention, I see the enemy. Three cracks - all to me.

The girls laughed. And he spoke like that on purpose: two cracks, three cracks. On purpose, so that they laugh, so that cheerfulness appears.

Head patrol, step by step! Let's move.

In front is Osyanina with a fat woman. Vaskov waited until they disappeared into the bushes, counted to himself to one hundred, and followed.

With the translator, under the rifle, pouch, rolling stock and sidor, she bent like a cane. Komelkova and Galya Chetvertak walked behind.

Vaskov did not worry about the rush to Lake Vop: the Germans could not know the direct road there, because he himself had discovered this road back to the Finnish one. On all the maps here the swamps were indicated, and the Germans had one way: around, through the forests, and then to the lake on the Sinyukhin ridge, and it was impossible for them to bypass this ridge. And no matter how his fighters march, no matter how much they choke, the Germans still have to go longer. They won’t get out there before evening, and by that time he will have already managed to block all the exits and passages. He’ll put his girls behind the rocks, cover them more precariously, fire once to cheer them up, and then he’ll talk. In the end, you can finish off one, but Vaskov was not afraid of a one-on-one fight with a German.

His soldiers walked briskly and seemed to be quite appropriate: the commandant did not detect laughter or conversation. How they were watching there, he couldn’t know about it, but he looked at his feet, as if under a bear’s cover, and spotted a light trail with someone else’s scars. This track was a good forty-four size, from which Fedot Evgrafych concluded that his fellow was under two meters and weighing more than six pounds. Of course, it was in no way suitable for the girls to meet with such stupidity face to face, even if they were armed, but soon the foreman saw another print and realized by two that the German was stomping around the swamp.

Everything turned out the way he planned.

“He runs pretty well,” he told his partner. - He even runs really well - about forty miles.

The translator didn’t say anything to this, because she was so tired, the butt was already dragging on the ground.

The foreman looked several times, snatching at her sharp, ugly, but very serious face, thought pitifully that with the current shortage of men, she would not see a family life, and asked unexpectedly:

Are your aunt and mother alive? Or are you orphaned?

Am I an orphan?... - She smiled: - Perhaps, you know, I am an orphan.

Are you not sure yourself?

Who is sure of this now, Comrade Sergeant Major?

My parents are in Minsk. - She twitched her skinny shoulder, adjusting her rifle. - I studied in Moscow, prepared for the session, and then...

Do you have any news?

Well, what's up?

Yes. - Fedot Evgrafych glanced sideways: he wondered if he would offend. - Parents of the Jewish nation?

Naturally.

Naturally. - The commandant sniffled angrily. - It would be natural, I wouldn’t ask.

The translator remained silent. She splashed her clumsy tarpaulins on the wet grass and frowned.

She sighed quietly:

Maybe I should leave the place.

This sigh cut Vaskov in the heart. Oh, you little sparrow, can you bear the grief on your hump? I wish I could swear now to the fullest extent possible, I could cover this war in twenty-nine attacks with overkill. And at the same time, the major who sent the girls in pursuit should be rinsed in lye. You look, and it would feel better, but instead you have to try to fit a smile to your lips with all your might.

Come on, soldier Gurvich, grunt three times!

Why is this?

To check combat readiness. Well? Forgot how you taught?

I immediately started smiling. And the eyes became alive.

No, I didn’t forget!

The crack, of course, didn’t turn out well: it was just pampering. Like in the theater. But both the lead patrol and the trailing unit still figured out what was what: they pulled themselves together.

And Osyanina just rushed over - and a rifle in her hand:

What's happened?

If something had happened, the archangels would have already met you in the next world,” the commandant reprimanded her. - Stomped, you know, like a heifer. And the tail is a pipe.

I was offended - my whole body flared up like the dawn of May. How could it be otherwise: we need to teach.

What more!

The redhead blurted out: she was upset for Osyanina.

That’s good,” Fedot Evgrafych said peacefully. - What did you notice along the way? In order: junior sergeant Osyanina.

It seems like nothing... - Rita hesitated. - The branch at the bend was broken.

Well done, that's right. Well, the closing ones. Komelkov fighter.

I didn't notice anything, everything was fine.

The dew has been knocked off the bushes,” Liza Brichkina suddenly said hastily. - On the right it’s still holding on, but on the left of the road it’s been knocked down.

Here's the eye! - the foreman said contentedly. - Well done, Red Army soldier Brichkin. There were also two tracks on the road. From the German rubber boots that their paratroopers wear.

Judging by their socks, they are kept around the swamp. And let them keep it for themselves, because we will take this swamp directly. Now you can smoke for fifteen minutes and recover.

They giggled as if he had said something stupid. And this is a team, it is written in the charter.

Vaskov frowned:

Don't shout! And don't run away. All!.

He showed where to put the duffel bags, where to put the rolls, where to put the rifles, and disbanded his army. At once everyone scurried into the bushes like mice.

The sergeant-major took out a hatchet, cut out six good pieces of wood in the dead wood, and only after that he lit a cigarette, sitting down by the things. Soon everyone gathered here: they whispered and looked at each other.

Now we need to be more careful,” said the commandant. “I’ll go first, and you’ll follow me in a herd, but one after the other.” There are quagmires here left and right: you won’t have time to call your mother. Each one will take it lightly and before placing its foot, let it try it slightly. Any questions?

They remained silent this time: the redhead only jerked her head, but refrained. The foreman stood up and trampled his cigarette butt into the moss.

Well, who has a lot of strength?

And what? - Lisa Brichkina asked uncertainly.

Brichkin's fighter will carry the translator's duffel bag.

For what?. - Gurvich squeaked.

And then, they don’t ask! Komelkova!

Take the bag from the Red Army soldier Chetvertak.

Come on, Chetvertachok, and a rifle too...

Talkers! Do what you are told: everyone carries a personal weapon with them.

He shouted and got upset: it’s not like that, it’s not necessary! Can you achieve consciousness with your throat?

You can get to the point, but it won’t get you anywhere. However, talking became painful. Twitter. And the twitter of a military man is a bayonet in the liver. This is so precise.

I repeat, so without making a mistake. Behind me in the back of the head. Put your foot next to the next.

Light it up.

Can i ask you?

Lord, it is your will! They can't stand it.

What do you want, Komelkov fighter?

What is a slug? Slightly, or what?

The redhead is playing the fool, you can see it in her eyes. Dangerous eyes, like whirlpools.

What's in your hands?

The club is like that.

Here she is slightly. Am I clear?

Now it's clearer. Dahl.

How far is it?

This is the vocabulary, Comrade Sergeant Major. Like a phrase book.

Evgeniya, stop it! - Osyanina shouted.

Yes, the route is dangerous, there is no time for jokes. Order of movement: I am the leader. Behind me are Gurvich, Brichkina, Komelkova, Chetvertak. Junior Sergeant Osyanina is in rear.

Is it deep there?

Thursday is interested. Well, it’s clear: with her height, even a bucket is just a barrel.

In some places it will be p.o. Well, that's it. That means up to your waist. Take care of your rifle.

He stepped up to his knees - only the quagmire clacked. He wandered off, rocking as if on a spring mattress. He walked without looking back, determining by sighs and frightened whispers how the detachment was moving.

The damp, stagnant air hung stiflingly over the swamp. Tenacious spring mosquitoes hovered in clouds over the hot bodies. There was a pungent smell of rotting grass, rotting algae, and swamp.

Leaning with all their weight on the poles, the girls struggled to stretch their legs out of the sucking cold swamp. Wet skirts clung to their thighs, rifle butts dragged in the mud.

Each step was given with tension, and Vaskov walked slowly, adapting to little Gala Chetvertak.

He headed for an island where two low pine trees, warped by dampness, grew.

The commandant did not take his eyes off them, catching a distant dry birch tree in the gap between the crooked trunks, because there was no longer a ford to the right or left.

Comrade Sergeant Major!...

Ah, lesh and y!. The commandant drove the pole in tighter and turned with difficulty: that’s right, they stretched out and became steel.

Don't stand! Don't stand, you'll get sucked in!

Comrade Sergeant Major, the boot has fallen off my foot!

The quarter screams from the very tail. It sticks out like a bump, and you can’t see the skirt. Osyanina came up and picked her up. They poke a pole into the quagmire: are they groping for a boot or something?

Komelkova threw it slightly and swayed to the side. Well, he noticed in time.

He screamed until the veins on his forehead bulged:

Where?!. Stand!...

I'll help.

Stop!... No way back!

Lord, he was completely confused with them: either not to stand, or to stand. No matter how scared they were, they didn’t panic. Panic in a quagmire is death.

Calm down, just calm down! It's a small matter to get to the island. We'll rest there. Did you find a boot?

No!. It's pulling down, Comrade Sergeant Major!

We must go! It’s unsteady here, you can’t stand still for a long time.

What about the boot?

Will you find him now? Forward!. Forward, follow me! - He turned and walked away without looking back. - Next after next. Keep!.

He shouted it on purpose so that he would feel cheerful. The team makes the fighters feel more cheerful, he knew this from his own experience. Exactly.

We've finally arrived. He was especially afraid in the last meters: it was deeper there. You can’t stretch your legs anymore, you have to push this damn thing apart with your body. This requires strength and skill. But it worked out.

At the island, where it was already possible to stand, Vaskov paused. He let his whole team pass by and helped them get out onto solid ground.

Just don't rush. Calmly. Let's take a break here.

The girls went out onto the island and collapsed on last year’s withered grass. Wet, covered in mud, suffocating. The quarter donated not only boots, but also a footcloth to the swamp: she came out in one stocking. My thumb sticks out into the hole, blue from the cold.

Well, comrade fighters, are you tired?

The soldiers remained silent. Only Lisa agreed:

We were torn.

We should wash ourselves,” said Rita.

On the other side of the channel there is a clean, sandy bank. At least take a swim. Well, of course, you’ll have to dry it on the go. Chetvertak sighed and asked timidly:

What can I do without a boot?

“We’ll figure it out for you,” Fedot Evgrafych smiled. - Just beyond the swamp, not here. Will you be patient?

I'll be patient.

You’re disheveled, Galka,” Komelkova said angrily. - You had to bend your fingers up when you pulled your leg out.

I bent over, but he still got down.

It's cold, girls.

I'm wet all the way down.

Do you think I'm dry? I stumbled once, but how can I sit down!...

They laugh. So it’s okay, they’re leaving. Even though they are female, they are young and have no strength whatsoever, but they are there. Just don't get sick: the water is ice.

Fedot Evgrafych took another drag, threw his cigarette butt into the swamp, and stood up. He said cheerfully:

Well, take it easy, comrade fighters. And for me the same order. We will wash and warm ourselves there, on the shore.

And he jumped from the root straight into the brown mess.

This last ford was also God forbid. A slurry like oatmeal jelly: it doesn’t hold your leg and doesn’t let you float. While you are pushing it to move forward, it will take seven sweats.

How are you, comrades?

It was he who shouted to raise his spirits, without looking back.

Are there leeches here? - Gurvich asked breathlessly. She followed him, already along the broken ground: it was easier for her.

There's no one here. A dead place, disastrous.

A bubble swelled on the left. It burst, and at once the swamp sighed loudly.

Someone behind him yelped in fear, and Vaskov explained:

His “guard” is silent. Puffs, groans, gasps. But they climb. They climb stubbornly, evil.

It became easier: the jelly was thinner, the bottom was stronger, even bumps appeared here and there.

The sergeant-major deliberately did not speed up, and the detachment pulled up: they were heading to the back of the head. We got out to the birch tree almost at once; further on the forest began, with hummocks and moss. This seemed like a completely trivial matter, especially since the soil kept rising and in the end imperceptibly turned into a dry white-moss forest. Here they began to shout at once, were delighted and threw themselves away. However, Fedot

Evgrafych ordered to lift everything up and lean it all against one noticeable pine tree:

Maybe it will suit someone.

And he didn’t give me a minute to rest. Chetvertak didn’t even spare barefoot Galya:

Just a little left, comrade Red Army soldiers, push yourself. Let's rest by the duct.

We climbed onto a hillock - a channel opened through the pine trees. Pure as a tear, on golden sandy shores.

Hooray!. - screamed red-haired Zhenya. - Beach, girls! The girls shouted something funny and rushed towards the river along the slope, throwing off their rolls and bags as they went.

Leave!. - the commandant barked. - S m i r n o!

They froze at once. They look surprised, even offended.

Sand!. - the foreman continued angrily. - And you shove rifles into it, warriors.

Lean the rifles against the tree, okay? Sidora, rolls - in one place. I give forty minutes for washing and tidying. I'll be behind the bushes within sound communication distance. You, junior sergeant Osyanina, are responsible for order.

Yes, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Well, that's it. In forty minutes so that everyone is ready. Dressed, shod - and clean.

I went lower. I chose a place with sand, deep water, and bushes all around. He took off his ammunition, boots, and undressed.

Somewhere the girls were talking inaudibly:

only laughter and isolated words reached Vaskov, and perhaps for this reason he listened all the time.

First of all, Fedot Evgrafych washed the riding breeches, foot wraps and linen, wrung them out as best he could, and spread them out on the bushes to dry. Then he lathered up, sighed, stomped along the bank, gathering the will within himself, and jumped off the cliff into the pool. I surfaced and couldn’t breathe: the icy water squeezed my heart.

I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs, but I was afraid to scare my “guard”:

he quacked almost in a whisper, without pleasure, washed off the soap - and ashore. And only when he had rubbed himself red with a harsh towel, caught his breath, and began to listen again.

And there they chatted, as if at a conversation: everything at once and each to his own.

They just laughed together, and Chetvertak joyfully shouted:

Oh, Zhenechka! Ay, Zhenechka!

Only forward! - Komelkova suddenly yelled, and the foreman heard water splashing tightly behind the bushes.

“Look, they’re swimming...” - he thought respectfully. An enthusiastic squeal drowned out all the sounds at once: good, the Germans were far away. At first it was impossible to make out anything in this squeal, and then Osyanina sharply shouted:

Evgenia, ashore!... Now!

Smiling, Fedot Evgrafych rolled a cigarette thicker, struck the flint with a Katyusha, lit it from the smoldering wick and began to smoke slowly, with pleasure, exposing his bare back to the warm May sun.

In forty minutes, of course, nothing had dried, but it was impossible to wait, and Vaskov, shivering, pulled on his long underpants and riding breeches. Fortunately, he had spare footcloths, and he put his feet dry into his boots. I put on my tunic, tightened my belt, and grabbed my things.

He shouted loudly:

Are you ready, comrade soldiers?

Wait!.

Well, I knew it! Fedot Evgrafych grinned, shook his head and just opened his mouth to scare them away when Osyanina shouted again:

Go! It’s possible!.. It’s the soldiers shouting “it’s possible” to the senior in rank! It’s kind of a mockery of the charter, if you think about it. Disorder.

But that’s what he thought, by the way, because after swimming and resting the commandant was in a May Day mood. Moreover, the “guard” was waiting for him in a neat, clean and smiling form.

Well, comrade Red Army soldiers, is everything in order?

Order, comrade sergeant major, Evgeniya was swimming with us.

Well done, Komelkova. Not frozen?

So after all, there’s no one to warm it up anyway.

Spicy! Come on, comrade fighters, let's have a little snack and get moving before we sit too long.

We snacked on bread and herring: the foreman held back the filling for now. Then they built this chunya of this unlucky Chetvertak: they wrapped it in a spare footcloth, two woolen socks on top (his handicraft and a gift from the hostess), and Fedot Evgrafych made a box for his feet from fresh birch bark.

I adjusted it and secured it with a bandage:

Is it okay?

Very much. Thank you, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Well, let's go, comrade soldiers. We still have to keep our feet down for another hour and a half. Yes, and there you need to look around, prepare, how and where to greet guests...

He drove his girls quickly: it was necessary for their skirts and other things to dry as they walked.

But the girls didn’t give up, they just turned red.

Well, let's press, comrade fighters! Follow me! I ran until I had enough breath. He took it a step further, let me catch my breath, and again:

Behind me!. B his m!.

The sun was already setting when we reached Lake Vop. It quietly splashed against the boulders, and the pine trees were already making an evening noise on the banks. No matter how the foreman peered into the horizon, no boats were visible on the water; No matter how much you sniffed the whispering breeze, there was no whiff of smoke from anywhere. And before the war, these regions were not very populated, but now they have become completely wild, as if everyone - lumberjacks, hunters, fishermen, and tar smokers - had all gone to the front.

“Quietly,” said the ringing Evgenia in a whisper. - Like in a dream.

The ridge begins from the left spit of Sinyukhin,” explained Fedot Evgrafych. - On the other side of this ridge there is a second lake, it’s called Legontovo. A monk once lived here, nicknamed Legont. I was looking for silence.

There’s enough silence here,” Gurvich sighed.

The Germans have only one way: between these lakes, through the ridge. And there we know what: sheep’s foreheads and stones from the hut. It is in them that we must choose positions: the main one and the reserve one, as the charter teaches. Let's choose, eat, relax and wait. So, comrades, Red Army soldiers. ?

The Red Army comrades fell silent. We thought about it.

For a long time, Vaskov felt older than he was. If he hadn’t married someone else when he was fourteen, his family would have gone all over the world. Moreover, there was a lot of hunger then, there was a lot of disorder. And he was the only man left in the family - the breadwinner, the water provider, and the earner. He worked as a peasant in the summer, killed animals in the winter, and learned that people were entitled to days off when he was twenty. Well, then the army: it’s also not a kindergarten... In the army, solidity is respected, but he respected the army. And so it turned out that at this stage, again, he did not become younger, but on the contrary, he became a sergeant major. And the foreman is the foreman: he is always old for the soldiers. It's supposed to be like that.

And Fedot Evgrafych forgot about his age. He knew one thing: he was older than privates and lieutenants, equal to all majors and always younger than any colonel. It was not a matter of subordination - it was a matter of attitude.

Therefore, he looked at the girls whom he had to command as if from a different generation. It was as if he was a participant in the civil war and personally drank tea with Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev near the city of Lbischensk. And not because of the calculations of the mind, not because of some vow it turned out this way, but from nature, from the essence of his eldership.

The thought that he was older than himself never occurred to Vaskov.

And only on this quiet and bright night did something dubious stir.

But then the night was still far away; they were still choosing a position. His fighters galloped over the stones like goats, and he suddenly galloped with them, and he did everything so cleverly that he himself was surprised. And being surprised, he frowned and immediately began to walk sedately and climb onto the boulders in three steps.

However, this was not the main thing. The main thing is that he found an excellent position. Deep, with sheltered approaches, with a view from the forest to the lake. It stretched like silent sheep's foreheads along the lake reach, leaving only a narrow open strip near the shore for passage. Along this strip, if something happened, the Germans had to go around the ridge for three hours, but he could retreat directly, through the stones, and take up a reserve position long before the enemy approached. Well, that’s what he chose for reinsurance, because he could probably cope with two saboteurs here, at the main one.

Having chosen a position, Fedot Evgrafych, as expected, calculated the time. According to this calculation, it turned out that the Germans still had to wait for four hours, and therefore he allowed his team to prepare hot food at the rate of a pot for two. Liza Brichkina volunteered to cook: he allocated two pigs to help her and gave instructions that the fire should be without smoke.

If I notice the smoke, I’ll pour the whole brew into the fire at that very moment. Am I clear?

No, it’s not clear, comrade fighter. And then it will be clear when you ask me for an ax and send your assistants to chop dead wood. And tell them to chop down the one that is still standing without lichen. So that it is loud. Then there will be no smoke, but only heat.

An order is an order, but for example, he himself broke some dry wood for them, and lit a fire himself. Then, when I was working on the ground with Osyanina, I kept looking there, but there was no smoke: only the air trembled over the stones, but you had to know about that or have a trained eye, and the Germans, of course, could not have such an eye.

While the troika was cooking there, Vaskov, junior sergeant Osyanina and fighter Komelkova climbed the entire ridge. We identified locations, sectors of fire, and landmarks.

Fedot Evgrafych personally checked the distance to the landmarks in pairs of steps and entered it into the shooting card, as required by the regulations.

By that time they called for lunch. They settled in pairs as they walked, and the commandant got the bowler hat in half with the soldier Gurvich. She, of course, became modest and started tapping the spoon too often, throwing the very brew to him.

The foreman said disapprovingly:

You are knocking in vain, comrade translator. I’m not your little friend, you know, and there’s no point in giving me pieces. Turn it up like a fighter should.

“I’m making it up,” she smiled.

I see! Thin as a spring rook.

This is my constitution.

Constitution?... Over there, Brichkina has the same constitution as all of us, but in her body.

There's a lot to see.

After dinner we drank some tea: Fedot Evgrafych picked some lingonberry leaves while on the march, and they brewed them. We rested for half an hour, and the foreman ordered to line up.

Listen to the battle order! - he began solemnly, although somewhere inside he doubted that he was doing the right thing about this order. - The enemy, with a force of up to two heavily armed Fritz, is moving to the Vop-Lake area with the goal of secretly getting to the Kirov Railway and the White Sea-Baltic Canal named after Comrade Stalin. Our detachment of six people was tasked with holding the defense of the Sinyukhin Ridge, where we could capture the enemy. The neighbor on the left is Vop-lake, the neighbor on the right is Legontovo lake. - The foreman paused, cleared his throat, thought upset that the order, perhaps, should have been written on a piece of paper first, and continued: - I decided: to meet the enemy at the main position and, without opening fire, invite him to surrender. In case of resistance, kill one and still take the other alive. At the reserve position, leave all property under the protection of the Chetvertak fighter. Combat operations can only begin on my command. I appoint junior sergeant Osyanina as my deputies, and if she fails, then soldier Gurvich. Questions?

Why am I being put on the bench? - Chetvertak asked offendedly.

An insignificant question, comrade fighter. You have been ordered, so do it.

You, Galka, are our reserve,” said Osyanina.

There are no questions, everything is clear,” Komelkova responded cheerfully.

And clearly, I ask you to go to the position. He took the fighters to the places that he had figured out ahead of time together with Osyanina, indicated landmarks to each, and once again personally warned them to lie down like mice.

So that no one moves. I will talk to them first.

In German? - Gurvich scoffed.

In Russian! - the foreman said sharply. - And you will translate if they don’t understand. Am I clear? Everyone was silent.

If you stick your head out like that in battle, then there won’t be a medical battalion nearby. And mom too.

He was in vain about what he said about Mama, completely in vain. And therefore he became terribly angry:

After all, everything will happen in earnest, not at the shooting range!

It’s good to fight a German from afar. While you are distorting your three-ruler, he will make a sieve out of you. Therefore, I categorically order you to lie down. Lie down until it's "fire!" I won't command. Otherwise I won’t notice that the gender is feminine... - Here Fedot Evgrafych stopped short and waved his hand. - All. The briefing is over.

I identified observation sectors and distributed them in pairs so that they could see with four eyes. He climbed higher and searched the edge of the forest with binoculars until a tear came out.

The sun was already completely clinging to the peaks, but the stone on which Vaskov lay still retained the accumulated heat. The sergeant major put down his binoculars and closed his eyes to rest. And immediately this warm stone swayed smoothly and floated somewhere into peace and quiet, and Fedot Evgrafych did not have time to realize that he was dozing. It was as if he felt the breeze and heard all the rustling sounds, but it seemed that he was lying on the stove, that he forgot to lay down the sackcloth and that he should tell his mother about this. And I saw Mama: nimble, little, who had been sleeping for many years in fits and starts, in some pieces, as if stealing them from her peasant life. I saw hands, incredibly thin, with fingers that had long been unbent from dampness and work. I saw her wrinkled, as if baked, face, tears on her withered cheeks and realized that mother was still crying over the death of Igor, that she was still blaming herself and tormenting herself. He wanted to say something kind to her, but then suddenly someone touched him on the leg, and for some reason he decided that it was the tyke, and he was scared to his very heart. He opened his eyes: Osyanina was climbing on a stone and touching his leg.

Germans?.

“Where?” she responded in fear.

Ew, lesh and y. It seemed.

Rita looked at him for a long time and smiled:

Take a nap, Fedot Evgrafych. I'll bring you the overcoat.

What are you saying, Osyanina? This is what made me sad. I need to smoke.

He went down and Komelkova was combing his hair under the rock. I let it loose - the back is not visible. I began to move the comb, but my hand was missing: I had to intercept it. And the hair is thick, soft, and has a copper cast. And her hands move smoothly, leisurely, calmly.

Painted, I guess? - asked the foreman and was afraid that he would be sarcastic now and this simple thing would end.

Their. Am I disheveled?

It's nothing.

Don’t think that Liza Brichkina is watching me there. She's big-eyed.

OK OK. Oh get well.

Oh goblin, that word popped up again! Because it’s from the charter. Forever stuck.

You are a bear, Vaskov, a deaf bear!

The foreman frowned. He lit a cigarette and wrapped himself in smoke.

Comrade Sergeant Major, are you married?

He looked: a green eye was peeking through the red flame. Incredible eye power, like a one hundred and fifty-two millimeter howitzer gun.

Married, Komelkov fighter.

Lied, of course. But with such people it is for the better. Positions determine who should stand where.

Where's your wife?

It is known where - at home.

Do you have children?

Children?. - Fedot Evgrafych sighed. - There was a boy. Died. Just before the war.

She threw back her hair, looked, and looked straight into her soul. Straight to the soul. And she didn't say anything more. No consolations, no jokes, no empty words.

That’s why Vaskov couldn’t resist sighing:

Yes, mom didn’t save me...

He said it and regretted it. He regretted it so much that he immediately jumped up and straightened his tunic, as if at a parade.

How are you doing, Osyanina?

No one, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Keep watching!

And he went from fighter to fighter.

The sun had long since set, but it was light, as if before dawn, and the fighter Gurvich was reading a book behind her stone.

She mumbled in a sing-song voice, like a prayer, and Fedot Evgrafych listened before approaching:

Those born in the deaf years do not remember their own paths.

We are the children of the terrible years of Russia. We cannot forget anything.

Sizzling years!

Is there madness in you, is there hope?

From the days of war, from the days of freedom, there is a bloody reflection in the faces.

Who are you reading to? - he asked, approaching. The translator became embarrassed (after all, I was ordered to observe, to observe!), put the book aside, and wanted to get up. The foreman waved his hand.

To whom, I ask, are you reading?

So it's poetry.

Ahh... - Vaskov didn’t understand. I took the book - a thin one, like a manual on a grenade launcher - and leafed through it. - You ruin your eyes.

Light, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Yes, I actually am. And that’s it, don’t sit on the rocks. They will cool down soon, they will begin to draw warmth out of you, and you won’t even notice. You cover your overcoat.

Okay, Comrade Sergeant Major. Thank you.

Brichkina was located closer to the lake, and from a distance Fedot Evgrafych smiled contentedly: what a smart girl! She broke some spruce branches, lined a hollow between the stones, and covered them with her overcoat: an experienced person.

I even asked:

Where will you be from, Brichkina?

From the Bryansk region, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Did you work on a collective farm?

She worked. And I helped my father more. He is a forester, we lived at the cordon.

You quack well.

Laughed. They love to laugh, they haven’t lost the habit yet - Didn’t you notice anything?

It's quiet for now.

Take note of everything, Brichkina. Are the bushes swaying, are the birds rustling?

You are a forest person, you understand everything.

Understand.

Exactly...

The sergeant-major stomped around: he seemed to have said everything, he seemed to have given instructions, he seemed to have to leave, but his legs wouldn’t move. She was such a real girl, a forest girl, she was so comfortable, she exhaled too much warmth, like that Russian stove that he had dreamed of today in his slumber.

Lisa, Lisa, Lizaveta, why don’t you send me greetings, why don’t you sing drolya, or your drolya is not pretty,” the commandant rattled off straight away, in an official voice and explained: “This is such a refrain in our area.”

Afterwards we will sing with you, Lizaveta. Let's carry out the combat order and sing.

Honestly? - Lisa smiled.

Well, he said it.

The sergeant major suddenly winked at her in a dashing manner, but he himself was the first to become embarrassed, straightened his cap and walked away.

Brichkina shouted after:

Well, look, Comrade Sergeant Major! They promised!

He didn’t answer her, but smiled all the way until he came out across the ridge to a reserve position. Then he wiped the smile from his face and began to look for where the Chetvertak fighter had hidden.

And the fighter Chetvertak was sitting under a rock on sacks, wrapped in an overcoat and putting her hands in her sleeves. The raised collar hid her head along with her cap, and her red, gristly nose stuck out sadly between the official lapels.

Why are you so tired, comrade fighter?

Cold.

He extended his hand, and she pulled back: she foolishly decided that he had come to grab her or something.

Don't be so eager, Lord! Come on forehead. Well?.

She stuck her neck out. The foreman squeezed her forehead and listened: it was burning. He says, the leshak will completely crush you!

You have a fever, comrade fighter. Can you hear it?

Silent. And the eyes are sad, like those of a heifer: anyone will be blamed. Here it is, a swamp, Comrade Sergeant Major Vaskov. Here it is, the boot lost by the fighter, your hasty and the May silver coat. If you get one person who is not capable of combat, he will be a burden on the entire squad and personally on your conscience.

Fedot Evgrafych pulled out his sidor, threw off the straps, dived: in a secluded place his most important enze lay - a flask with alcohol, seven hundred and fifty grams, under the cap.

He poured it into the mug.

So will you take it or dilute it?

What is this?

Medicine. Well, alcohol, right?

She waved her hands and moved away:

Oh, what are you, what are you.

I order you to accept it!... - The foreman thought a little, diluted it with a little water. - Drink. And water right away.

No, that's it.

Drink without talking!...

Well, what are you really saying! My mother is a medical worker.

No mother. There is a war, there are Germans, I am, Sergeant Major Vaskov. And there is no mother. Those who survive the war will have mothers. Am I clear?

She drank it, choking, with tears in half. She coughed. Fedot Evgrafych tapped her lightly on the back with his palm. She moved away.

She smeared her tears with her palms and smiled:

My head is smart. ran!.

You'll catch up tomorrow.

I brought the spruce branches to her. He laid it out and covered it with his overcoat:

Rest, comrade fighter.

How are you without your overcoat?

I'm healthy, don't be afraid. Get better only by tomorrow. I beg you, get well.

It became quiet all around. And the forests, and the lakes, and the air itself - everything went to rest, hid. It had passed midnight, tomorrow was beginning, and there were no traces of any Germans.

Rita glanced at Vaskov every now and then, and when they were alone, she asked:

Maybe we’re sitting in vain?

Maybe in vain,” the foreman sighed. - However, I don’t think so. If you haven’t confused those Krauts with stumps, of course.

By this time the commandant had canceled the positional vigil. He sent the soldiers to a reserve position, ordered them to break the spruce branches and sleep until they got up. But he stayed here, on the main line, and Osyanina followed him.

The fact that the Germans did not appear greatly puzzled Fedot Evgrafych. After all, they might not have been here at all, they might have set their sights on the road somewhere else, they might have had some other task, and not at all the one that he had determined for them. They could have already done a lot of trouble: shoot some of the authorities or blow up something important. Then go and explain to the tribunal why, instead of combing the forest and pinning the Germans, the hell with it. Did you feel sorry for the fighters? Are you afraid to throw them into open battle? This is no excuse if an order is not followed. No, not an excuse.

You should get some sleep for now, Comrade Sergeant Major. At dawn I woke you up.

What a damn dream! The commandant didn’t even feel the cold, even though he was wearing only a gymnasium.

Wait a minute, Osyanina. It will be an eternal dream for me, you know, if I missed the Fritz.

Or maybe they are sleeping now, Fedot Evgrafych?

Well, yes. They are people. They themselves said that the Sinyukhin Ridge is the only convenient passage to the railway. And before her and M.

Wait, Osyanina, wait! Half a hundred miles, that’s for sure, even more. Yes, in unfamiliar terrain. Yes, I'm scared of every bush. A?. Is that what I think?

Yes, Comrade Sergeant Major.

And so, then they could, it’s a free thing, and lie down to rest. Somewhere in the windfall. And they will sleep until the sun shines. And with the sun. A?.

Rita smiled. And again she looked long and hard, the way women look at children.

So you can rest until the sun shines. I'll wake you up.

I can’t sleep, comrade Osyanina... Margarita, how about your father?

Just call me Rita, Fedot Evgrafych.

Shall we light a cigarette, Comrade Rita?

I do not smoke.

Yes, about the fact that they are people too, I somehow misunderstood that. She suggested correctly: we should rest. And you go, Rita. Go.

I dont want to sleep.

Well, lie down for now and stretch your legs. Are they buzzing out of habit?

Well, I just have a good habit, Fedot Evgrafych,” Rita smiled.

But the foreman nevertheless persuaded her, and Rita lay down right there, on the future front line, on the spruce branches that Liza Brichkina had prepared for herself. She covered herself with her overcoat, thought to take a nap until dawn - and fell asleep. Strongly, without dreams, like a failure. And I woke up when the foreman pulled my overcoat.

Quiet! Do you hear?

Rita took off her overcoat, straightened her skirt, and jumped up. The sun had already left the horizon, the rocks were turning pink. I looked out: birds were flying screaming over the distant forest.

Birds k r i c h a t.

With Oroki!. - Fedot Evgrafych laughed quietly. - White-sided magpies are making noise, Rita.

That means someone is coming and bothering them. Not otherwise - guests. Croy, Osyanina, raise up the fighters.

Instantly! But secretly, no matter what!.., Rita ran away.

The foreman lay down in his place - in front and higher than the others. I checked the revolver and loaded a cartridge into the rifle. I fumbled with binoculars along the forest edge illuminated by the low sun.

Magpies circled over the bushes, chattering and clicking loudly.

The fighters pulled up. Silently they went to their places and lay down.

Gurvich made her way to him:

Hello, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Great. How is this Thursday?

Sleeping. They didn't wake me up.

They made the right decision. Be there for communication. Just keep your head down.

I won’t stick my head out,” Gurvich said.

The magpies flew closer and closer, in some places the tops of the bushes were already trembling, and it even seemed to Fedot Evgrafych that dead wood crunched under the heavy foot of someone walking.

And then everything seemed to freeze, and the magpies seemed to somehow calm down, but the foreman knew that there were people sitting at the very edge, in the bushes. They sat, peering at the lake shores, into the forest on the other side, into the ridge through which their path lay and where he and his soldiers, ruddy from sleep, were now hiding.

That mysterious moment has come when one event turns into another, when cause gives way to effect, when chance is born. In ordinary life, a person never notices it, but in war, where nerves are strained to the limit, where the primitive meaning of existence - to survive - again emerges at the first moment of life - this minute becomes real, physically tangible and long to infinity.

Well, go, go, go... - Fedot Evgrafych silently whispered.

Distant bushes swayed, and two people cautiously slipped out to the edge. They were wearing spotted gray-green capes, but the sun was shining directly on their faces, and the commandant clearly saw their every movement.

Keeping their fingers on the triggers of the machine guns, bending down, with a light, cat-like step, they moved towards the lake.

But Vaskov no longer looked at them. I didn’t look, because the bushes behind them continued to sway, and from there, from the depths, gray-green figures with machine guns at the ready kept coming out and coming out.

Three. five. eight. ten. - Gurvich counted in a whisper. - Twelve.

fourteen. fifteen, sixteen. Sixteen, Comrade Chief.

The bushes froze.

The magpies flew off with a distant cry.

Sixteen Germans, looking around, slowly walked along the shore towards Sinyukhina Ridge.

All his life, Fedot Evgrafych followed orders. He did it literally, quickly and with pleasure, because it was in this punctual execution of someone else’s will that he saw the whole meaning of his existence. As a performer, his superiors valued him, and nothing more was required of him. He was a transmission gear of a huge, carefully adjusted mechanism: he spun and spun others, not caring where this rotation began, where it was directed and how it ended.

And the Germans slowly and steadily walked along the shore of Vop-Lake, walked straight towards him and his fighters who were now lying behind the stones, pressing, as ordered, their tight cheeks to the cold butts of their rifles.

“Sixteen, comrade sergeant major,” Gurvich repeated almost silently.

“I see,” he said without turning around. - Let's join the chain, Gurvich. Tell Osyanina to immediately withdraw the fighters to a reserve position. Hiddenly, secretly!.. Wait, where are you going? Send Brichkina to me. Crawling, comrade translator. Now, for now, we will live by crawling.

Gurvich crawled away, carefully weaving between the stones. The commandant wanted to come up with something, to decide something immediately, but his head was desperately empty, and only one desire, nurtured over the years, was annoyingly disturbing: to report. Now, this very second, report to the command that the situation has changed, that with his own forces he can no longer block either the Kirov Railway or the canal named after Comrade Stalin.

His detachment began to retreat; somewhere a rifle rattled, somewhere a stone fell. These sounds physically reverberated within him, and although the Germans were still far away and could not hear anything, Fedot Evgrafych experienced real fear. Oh, if only a machine gun now had a full disc and a sensible second number! Even if it weren’t tar, there would have been three machine guns and men with more dexterity for them... But he had neither machine guns nor men, but only five funny girls and five clips per rifle. That’s why Sergeant Major Vaskov was sweating in that dewy May morning.

Comrade Sergeant. Comrade Sergeant.

The commandant carefully wiped away the sweat with his sleeve, only then turned around.

He looked into the close, wide-open eyes and winked:

Breathe more cheerfully, Brichkina. It's even better that there are sixteen of them. Understood?

The foreman did not explain why sixteen saboteurs were better than two, but Lisa nodded in agreement and smiled uncertainly.

Do you remember the way back well?

Yeah, Comrade Sergeant Major.

Look: to the left of the Krauts there is a pine forest. Once you pass it, keep the edge along the lake.

Where did you cut the brushwood?

Well done, girl! From there, go to the duct. Straightforward, you won’t get lost there.

Yes, I know, comrade.

Wait, Lizaveta, don’t rush. The main thing is the swamp, understand? The ford is narrow, left and right - a quagmire. Landmark - birch. From the birch tree straight to two pine trees on the island.

There, catch your breath a little, don’t climb right away. From the island, aim for the burnt stump from which I jumped into the swamp. The target is exactly on him: he is clearly visible.

Report the situation to Kiryanova. We’ll circle the Fritz here a little, but we won’t hold out for long, you understand.

The rifle, the bag, the roll - leave everything. Blow lightly.

So should I go now?

Don’t forget to lie down in front of the swamp.

Yeah. I ran.

Blow, Lizaveta Batkovna.

Lisa nodded silently and moved away. She leaned the rifle against a stone and began to remove the cartridge belt from her belt, all the while looking expectantly at the foreman. But Vaskov looked at the Germans and never saw her worried eyes. Lisa sighed carefully, tightened her belt and, bending down, ran to the pine forest, slightly dragging her legs, as all women in the world do.

The saboteurs were already very close - you can see their faces - Fedot Evgrafych, prostrate, was still lying on the stones. Looking sideways at the Germans, he looked at the pine forest that started from the ridge and stretched to the edge. The tops swayed twice, but they swayed easily, as if struck by a bird, and he thought that he had done the right thing by sending Lisa to Brichkina.

Having made sure that the saboteurs had not noticed the messenger, he put the rifle on safety and went down behind the stone. Here he picked up the weapon Lisa had left behind and ran straight back, with a sixth sense guessing where to place his foot so that the stomping would not be heard.

Comrade Sergeant Major!...

They rushed like sparrows to hemp. Even Chetvertak emerged from under her greatcoats.

It was a mess, of course: they should have shouted, commanded, and pointed out to Osyanina that she had not posted a guard.

He opened his mouth and raised his eyebrows like a commander, and as he looked into their tense eyes, he said, as if in a brigade camp:

It's bad, girls.

I wanted to sit on a stone, but Gurvich suddenly stopped me and quickly slipped her overcoat.

He nodded to her gratefully, sat down, and took out his pouch. They sat down in a row in front of him, silently watching as he rolled a cigarette.

Vaskov glanced at Chetvertak:

How are you?

Nothing. - She couldn’t smile: her lips didn’t obey. - I slept well.

So there are sixteen of them. “The foreman tried to speak calmly and therefore felt every word. - Sixteen machine guns is strength. You can't stop someone like that head-on.

And it’s also impossible not to stop, but they will be here in three hours, so you have to count.

Osyanina and Komelkova looked at each other, Gurvich was smoothing out her skirt on her knee, and Chetvertak looked at him with all her eyes, without blinking. The commandant now noticed everything, saw and heard everything, even though he was just smoking, looking at his cigarette.

“I sent Brichkin to the location,” he said after a while. - You can count on help by nightfall, not earlier. And if we get involved in battle until nightfall, we won’t hold out. You can’t hold out in any position, because they have sixteen machine guns.

What, should we watch them pass by? - Osyanina asked quietly.

You can’t let them through here, through the ridge,” said Fedot Evgrafych. - We need to get off the path. It is necessary to circle around Lake Legontovo and direct it around. But as? We won’t be able to hold out just by fighting. So post your thoughts.

Most of all, the foreman was afraid that they would understand his confusion. They smell it, they smell it with their mysterious guts - and that’s it. His superiority ended, the will of the commander ended, and with it the trust in him. That’s why he deliberately spoke calmly, simply, quietly, and that’s why he smoked as if he was sitting down on a neighbor’s heap. And he thought and thought, turned his heavy brains, sucked at all the possibilities.

To begin with, he ordered the soldiers to have breakfast. They were indignant, but he pulled it back and pulled the lard out of the bag. It is not known what affected them more - lard or the command, but they just started chewing vigorously. And Fedot Evgrafych regretted that in the heat of the moment he sent Liza Brichkina to such a distance on an empty stomach.

After breakfast, the commandant carefully shaved with cold water. He still had his father’s razor, a self-cutting dream, not a razor, but still he cut himself in two places.

He covered the cuts with newspaper, and Kamelkova took a bottle of cologne from the bag and cauterized the cuts herself.

He did everything calmly, unhurriedly, but time passed, and the thoughts in his head shied away like fry in shallow water. He just couldn’t collect them and kept regretting that he couldn’t take an ax and chop some wood: you see, then things would settle down, the unnecessary things would be weeded out, and he would find a way out of this situation.

Of course, the Germans did not come here to fight, he understood this clearly. They walked through the wilderness, carefully, with patrols scattered far away. For what? And so that the enemy cannot detect them, so that they do not get involved in a firefight, so that they can just as quietly, imperceptibly infiltrate through possible barriers to their main goal. So, it is necessary for them to see him, but he doesn’t seem to notice them?... Then, perhaps, they would move away and try to get through in another place. And another place is around Lake Legontova: a day's walk.

However, who can he show them? Four girls and yourself? Well, they’ll stay, well, they’ll send out reconnaissance, well, they’ll study them until they realize that there are exactly five of them in this screen. And then?. Then, Comrade Sergeant Major Vaskov, they won’t go anywhere.

They will surround you and without a shot, they will kill your entire squad with five knives. They are not fools, after all, to rush into the woods from four girls and a foreman with a revolver.

Fedot Evgrafych laid out all these considerations to the fighters - Osyanina, Komelkova and

If we don’t come up with something else in an hour or an hour and a half, it will be as I said. Get ready.

Get ready. What are you getting ready for? To the next world! So for this time, the less, the better.

Well, he was preparing, however. I took a grenade from the sidor, cleaned the revolver, and sharpened the tip on a stone. That’s all the preparation: the girls didn’t even have this lesson. They were whispering something and arguing on the sidelines.

Then they approached him:

Comrade foreman, what if they met lumberjacks?

Vaskov didn’t understand: what kind of lumberjacks? Where?. It’s war, the forests are empty, you’ve seen it yourself.

They began to explain, and the commandant realized. I realized: the part - no matter what it is - has location boundaries. Exact boundaries: the neighbors are known, and there are posts on all corners. And the lumberjacks are in the forest. The brigade may disperse: look for them there, in the wilderness. Will the Germans look for them? Well, hardly: it’s dangerous. You look just a little bit - and they’ll detect it and tell you where to go. Therefore, it is never known how many souls the forest is felling, where they are, what kind of connection they have.

Well, girls, you are my eagles!...

Behind the reserve position there was a small river flowing, but noisy. Beyond the river, straight from the water, there was a forest - an impassable darkness of aspen forests, windbreaks, and spruce thickets. Two steps away here the human eye was stuck in a living wall of undergrowth, and no Zeiss binoculars could penetrate it, follow its variability, determine its depth. This is exactly what Fedot Evgrafych had in mind when he accepted the girl’s plan for execution.

In the very center, so that the Germans would run right into them, he identified Chetvertak and Gurvich.

He ordered the fires to be lit higher, to shout and shout, so that the forest would ring. But still, don’t stick your head out too much from behind the bushes: well, flash there, show up, but not very much. And he ordered to take off his boots. Boots, caps, belts - everything that determines the shape.

Judging by the terrain, the Germans could only try to get around these fires to the left: on the right, the stone cliffs looked straight into the river, there was no convenient passage here, but to make sure that they were confident, he put Osyanina there. With the same order: flash, make noise and light a fire. And he, the left flank, took over Komelkova and himself: there was no other cover.

Moreover, from there the entire reach of the river was visible: if the Krauts had decided to cross, he would have had time to get two or three out of here so that the girls could leave and run away.

There was little time left, and Vaskov, having strengthened the guard by one more person, hurriedly began preparations with Osyanina and Komelkova. While they were carrying brushwood for the fires, he, openly (let them hear, let them be ready!), cut down the trees with an ax. He chose a higher, noisier one, chopping it so hard that the shock would knock him down, and ran to the next one. Sweat blurred his eyes, the mosquito stung unbearably, but the foreman, gasping for breath, hacked and hacked until Gurvich came running from the forward secret. She waved from that side.

They're coming, Comrade Sergeant Major!

In places,” said Fedot Evgrafych. - Take your places, girls, I just ask you very much: be careful. Flash behind the trees, not behind the bushes. And shout louder...

His fighters fled. Only Gurvich and Chetvertak were busy on the other side.

Chetvertak still couldn’t untie the bandages with which she was tied.

The foreman approached:

Wait, I'll reschedule.

Well, what are you talking about, comrade?

Wait, he said. The water is ice, but you are still ill.

He tried it on, grabbed the Red Army soldier in his arms (nothing: three pounds, no more). She put her hand around her neck, suddenly decided to blush for some reason.

Flooded right up to my neck:

Like with the little one in you.

The foreman wanted to joke with her - after all, he wasn’t carrying a block of wood, after all - but said something completely different:

Don't run too much in the wet there.

The water reached almost to the knees - cold, it hurt. Gurvich walked ahead, picking up her skirt. She flashed her thin legs, swinging her boots for balance.

Looked back:

Well, some water - brr!

And she immediately lowered her skirt, dragging the hem through the water. The commandant shouted angrily:

Pick up the hem!

She stopped, smiling:

The team is not from the charter, Fedot Evgrafych...

Nothing, they're still joking! Vaskov liked this, and he arrived on his flank, where Komelkova was already setting fires, in a good mood.

He screamed as loud as he could:

Come on, girls, give her some cheer! From afar Osyanina responded:

Hey-hey!. Ivan Ivanovich, drive the cart!...

They shouted, felled trees, shouted, and lit fires. The foreman also sometimes shouted so that the male voice could be heard, but more often, hiding, he sat in the willow tree, vigilantly peering into the bushes on the other side.

For a long time it was impossible to catch anything there. His fighters were already tired of shouting, already all the trees that had been cut down, Osyanin and Komelkova had been knocked down, the sun had already risen over the forest and illuminated the river, and the bushes on the other side stood motionless and silent.

Maybe u sh l?. - Komelkova whispered in her ear.

The goblin knows them, maybe they left. Vaskov is not a stereoscopic telescope; he might not have noticed how they crawled towards the shore. They, too, are shot birds - they won’t send anyone into such a thing. That's what he thought.

And he said briefly:

And again he stared into these bushes, studied to the last twig. He looked so hard that a tear came out. He blinked, rubbed his palm and shuddered: almost opposite, across the river, the alder tree began to tremble, gave way, and in the clearing a young face overgrown with rusty stubble was clearly visible.

Fedot Evgrafych extended his hand back, felt the round knee, and squeezed.

Komelkova touched his ear with her lips:

Another one flashed, lower. Two went to the shore, without backpacks, light. Having put out their machine guns, they searched the loud opposite bank with their eyes.

Vaskov’s heart skipped a beat: reconnaissance! This means that they finally decided to probe the thicket, count the lumberjacks, and find a crack between them. To hell with everything, the whole plan, all the screams, smoke and felled trees: the Germans were not afraid. Now they will cross, dart into the bushes, crawl out like snakes towards the girls’ voices, towards the fires and noise. They'll count it on their fingers and sort it out. and they will understand that they have been discovered.

Fedot Evgrafych smoothly, afraid to move the branch, took out his revolver. He'll definitely hit these two, still in the water, on the way. Of course, they will rush at him then, from all the remaining machine guns they will shy away, but the girls, perhaps, will have time to leave, to hide.

Just send it to Komelkov.

He looked around: standing behind him on her knees, Evgenia was angrily tearing her tunic over her head.

She threw it to the ground and jumped up without hiding.

S t o y!. - the foreman whispered.

Raya, Vera, go swimming! - Zhenya shouted loudly and straight, breaking the bushes, she went to the water.

For some reason Fedot Evgrafych grabbed her tunic and for some reason pressed it to his chest. And the lush Komelkova has already reached the rocky, sun-drenched stretch.

The branches opposite trembled, hiding the gray-green figures, Evgenia slowly, shaking her knees, pulled off her skirt and shirt and, stroking her black panties with her hands, suddenly began and shouted in a high, ringing voice:

Apple and pear trees blossomed, fogs floated over the river...

Oh, she was good just now, it’s a miracle how good she was! Tall, white-bodied, flexible - ten meters from the machine guns. She stopped the song, stepped into the water and, screaming, began splashing noisily and merrily. The spray sparkled in the sun, rolling down the elastic, warm body, and the commandant, not breathing, waited in horror for his turn. Now, now it will hit - and Zhenya will break, throw up his hands and...

The bushes were silent.

Girls, let's go swimming! - Komelkova shouted loudly and joyfully, dancing in the water. - Ivana zo v and those!. Hey Vanyusha, where are you?

Fedot Evgrafych threw away her tunic, put his revolver in his holster, and rushed on all fours deeper into the thicket. He grabbed an ax, ran back, and furiously chopped at the pine tree.

Hey, hey, and yay!. - he yelled and hit the trunk again. - Let's go now, wait! Wow!

He had never knocked down trees so quickly in his life - and where did the strength come from? He pressed it with his shoulder and laid it on a dry spruce forest to make more noise. Gasping, he rushed back to the place from where he had been observing and looked out.

Zhenya was already standing on the shore - sideways to him and the Germans. She calmly pulled on a light shirt, and the silk stuck, imprinted on her body and got wet, becoming almost transparent under the slanting rays of the sun beating from behind the forest. She, of course, knew about this, she knew, and therefore she slowly, smoothly bent, throwing her hair over her shoulders. And again Vaskov was burned to the point of black horror by the anticipation of the turn that would now splash out from behind the bushes, hit, mutilate, break this violent young body.

Flashing forbidden white, Zhenya pulled off her wet panties from under her shirt, wrung them out and carefully laid them out on the stones. She sat down next to her, stretched out her legs, and exposed her loose hair to the sun.

And the other shore was silent. He was silent, and the bushes did not move anywhere, and Vaskov, no matter how closely he looked, could not understand whether the Germans were still there or had already retreated. There was no time to guess, and the commandant, hastily throwing off his tunic, put the revolver in the pocket of his riding breeches and, loudly breaking the dead wood, went to the shore.

Where are you?

I wanted to shout cheerfully, but it didn’t work, my throat was constricted. I crawled out of the bushes into an open place - my heart almost broke out my ribs from fear.

I approached Komelkova:

They called from the area, the car will come now. So get dressed. Stop sunbathing.

I yelled for the other side, but I didn’t hear what Komelkova answered. He was all aimed there now, at the Germans, into the bushes. He was so aimed that it seemed to him that if the leaf moved, he would hear, catch, and have time to fall behind this boulder and pull out the revolver. But so far nothing seemed to be moving there.

Zhenya pulled him by the hand, he sat down next to him and suddenly saw that she was smiling, and her eyes were wide open, filled with horror, as if with tears. And this horror is alive and heavy, like mercury.

Get out of here, Komelkova,” Vaskov said, smiling with all his might.

She said something else, even laughed, but Fedot Evgrafych could not hear anything.

He had to take her away, take her behind the bushes immediately, because he could no longer count every moment when she would be killed. But so that everything would be easy, so that the damned Krauts would not realize that it was all a game, that their Germans were fooling them, it was necessary to come up with something.

If you don't want anything good, I'll show you to the people! - the sergeant-major suddenly yelled and grabbed her clothes from the stones. - Come on, catch up!...

Zhenya screamed, as expected, jumped up and rushed after him. Vaskov first ran along the bank, dodging her, and then slid behind the bushes and stopped only when he went deeper into the forest.

Get dressed! And stop playing with fire! Enough!.

Turning away, he stuck his skirt in, but she didn’t take it, and her hand hung in the air. He wanted to swear, he looked around - and the fighter Komelkova, covering her face, hunched over, was sitting on the ground, and her round shoulders were shaking under the narrow ribbons of her shirt.

It was then that they laughed. Then - when they found out that the Germans had left. They laughed at the hoarse Osyanina, at Gurvich for burning her skirt, at the grimy Chetvertak, at Zhenya, how she deceived the Fritz, at him, Sergeant Major Vaskov. They laughed to the point of tears, to the point of exhaustion, and he laughed, suddenly forgetting that he was a sergeant-major by rank, and remembering only that they had tricked the Germans by the nose, famously, mischievously, and that now the Germans were stomping around Lake Legontova in fear and anxiety for a day.

Well, that's all now! - said Fedot Evgrafych in between their fun. - That's it, girls, now they have nowhere to go, if, of course, Brichkina comes running in time.

“He’ll come running,” Osyanina said hoarsely, and everyone started laughing again, because her voice had become too funny. - She's fast.

So let’s have a small drink for this matter,” said the commandant and took out the treasured flask. - Let's drink, girls, to her fast legs and to your bright heads!

Here everyone got busy, spread a towel on the stones, began cutting bread, lard, and cutting up fish. And while they were doing these womanly things, the foreman, as expected, sat at a distance, smoked, waited for someone to call to the table, and wearily thought that the worst was behind him.

Liza Brichkina lived all nineteen years in a sense of tomorrow. Every morning she was burned with an impatient premonition of dazzling happiness, and immediately her mother’s exhausting cough pushed this date with the holiday until the next day.

He didn’t kill, he didn’t cross out, he moved it away.

“Our mother will die,” my father sternly warned. For five years, day after day, he greeted her with these words. Lisa went into the yard to give food to the pig, the sheep, and the old government gelding. The mother washed, changed and spoon-fed her. She cooked dinner, cleaned the house, walked around her father’s squares and ran to the nearby general store for bread. Her friends had graduated from school long ago: some had gone to study, some had already gotten married, and Lisa fed, washed, scrubbed, and fed again. And waited for tomorrow.

This day was never associated in her mind with the death of her mother. She could hardly remember her being healthy, but so many human lives were invested in Lisa herself that there was simply not enough room for the idea of death.

Unlike death, which my father reminded me of with such tedious severity, life was a real and tangible concept. She was hiding somewhere in the shining tomorrow, she was still avoiding this cordon lost in the forests, but Lisa knew firmly that this life existed, that it was intended for her and that it was impossible to pass it up, just as it was impossible not to wait for tomorrow. And Lisa knew how to wait.

From the age of fourteen she began to learn this great feminine art.

Pushed out of school by mother's illness; I was waiting first for returning to class, then for a date with my girlfriends, then for rare free evenings in the area near the club, then...

Then it happened that she suddenly had nothing to wait for. Her friends were either still studying, or were already working and living away from her, in their own interests, which over time she stopped feeling. The guys with whom you could once so easily and simply hang out and laugh in the club before a session have now become strangers and mocking.

Lisa began to shy away, keep silent, avoid fun companies, and then stopped going to the club altogether.

Thus her childhood passed away, and with it her old friends. But there were no new ones, because no one, except the dense foresters, looked into the kerosene reflections of their windows. And Lisa was bitter and scared, because she did not know what was coming to replace childhood. The dead winter passed in confusion and melancholy, and in the spring the father brought a hunter on a cart.

“He wants to live with us,” he told his daughter. - But where are we? Our mother is dying.

There's probably a hayloft?

It’s still cold,” Lisa said timidly.

Tulup and d and those?.

The father and the guest drank vodka in the kitchen for a long time. Behind the plank wall, my mother was drinking profusely.

Lisa ran to the cellar for cabbage, fried eggs and listened.

The father did most of the talking.

He poured glasses of vodka into himself, grabbed cabbage from the bowl with his fingers, shoved it into his hairy mouth and, choking, said and said:

Just wait, wait, dear man. Life, like a forest, needs to be thinned out and cleaned, so what happens? Wait a minute. There is dead wood, diseased trunks, undergrowth. So?

It needs to be cleaned,” the guest confirmed. - Do not thin out, but clean. Get the bad grass out of the field.

Yes, said the father. - So, wait a minute. If it’s a forest, then we foresters understand. Here we understand if this is a forest. What if this is life? If it's warm, does he run and write?

Wolf, for example...

Wolf?. - the father got ruffled. - Is the wolf bothering you? Why does it interfere? Why?

“Because he has teeth,” the hunter smiled.

Is it his fault that he was born a wolf? In inovat?. No, dear man, we blamed him, we blamed him ourselves, but we didn’t ask him. Is this fair?

Well, you know, Petrovich, a wolf and conscience are incompatible concepts.

Incompatible?. Well, are the wolf and the hare compatible? Wait a minute, wait, dear man! Okay, the order is to consider wolves as enemies of the population. OK. We took on this publicly and publicly shot all the wolves in all of Russia. V s e x!. What will happen?

What will happen? - the hunter smiled, - there will be a lot of game.

Few!. - the father barked and hit the echoing tabletop with his hairy fist. - Not enough, do you understand? They need to run, like animals, in order to exist in health. Run, dear man, okay? And to run, you need fear, fear that you might be eaten. Here. Of course, you can make life one color. Can. But why? For peace of mind? So the hares will get fat, become lazy, and stop working without the wolves. What then? Will we start raising our own wolves or buy them abroad for fear?

Have you ever been dispossessed, Ivan Petrovich? - the guest suddenly asked quietly.

Why bother me? - the forester sighed. - I have two fists and a wife and daughter to profit. It's not profitable for them to knuckle me.

Well, n a m!. - Father splashed some water in his glass and clinked his glass. - I'm not a wolf, dear man, I'm a hare. - He grabbed the rest of the glass, slammed the table, getting up, shaggy, like a bear. He stopped at the door. - I'm going to sleep. And your daughter will see you off. Will point there.

Lisa sat quietly in the corner. The hunter was urban, white-toothed, still young, and this was confusing. Constantly looking at him, she looked away in time, afraid to meet his gaze, afraid that he would speak, and she would not be able to answer or would answer stupidly.

Your father is careless.

“He’s a Red partisan,” she said hastily.

“We know that,” the guest smiled and stood up. - Well, take me to bed, Lisa.

The hayloft was as dark as a cellar. Lisa stopped at the entrance, thought, and took a heavy government sheepskin coat and a lumpy pillow from the guest.

Wait here.

She climbed up the rickety stairs, groped through the hay, and threw a pillow at the head of the bed. She could have gone down and called for a guest, but she, listening warily, was still crawling in the dark through last year’s soft hay, fluffing it up and laying it out more comfortably. In life, she would never admit to herself that she was waiting for the creaking of the steps under his feet, wanted a fussy and confused meeting in the dark, his breath, whisper, even rudeness. No, no sinful thoughts came into her head; I just wanted my heart to suddenly beat at full speed, for the promise of something foggy, hot, to loom and disappear.

But no one creaked the stairs, and Lisa went down. The guest was smoking at the entrance, and she angrily told him not to try to smoke in the hayloft.

“I know,” he said and stamped out the cigarette butt. - Good night.

And he went to bed. And Lisa ran into the house to put away the dishes. And while she was cleaning it up, carefully wiping each plate much more slowly than usual, she again waited with fear and hope for a knock on the window. And again no one knocked. Lisa blew out the lamp and went to her room, listening to her mother’s usual cough and the heavy snoring of her drunken father.

Every morning the guest disappeared from the house and appeared only late in the evening, hungry and tired. Lisa fed him, he ate hastily, but without greed, and she liked it. After eating, he immediately went to the hayloft, and Lisa stayed behind, because there was no longer any need to make the bed.

Why don’t you bring anything back from the hunt? - she said, plucking up her courage.

No luck,” he smiled.

“They’ve only lost weight,” she continued without looking. - Is this really a vacation?

This is a wonderful vacation, Lisa,” the guest sighed. - Unfortunately, it’s over too, I’m leaving tomorrow.

Yes, in the morning. So I didn’t shoot anything. Funny, is not it?

It’s funny,” she said sadly.

They didn’t speak anymore, but as soon as he left, Lisa somehow cleaned up the kitchen and slipped into the yard. She wandered around the barn for a long time, listened to the guest sigh and cough, chewed his fingers, and then quietly opened the door and quickly, afraid to change her mind, climbed into the hayloft.

Who?. - he asked quietly.

“I,” said Lisa. - Maybe we should fix the bed.

No need,” he interrupted. - Go to sleep.

Lisa was silent, sitting somewhere very close to him in the stuffy darkness of the hayloft. He heard her struggling to breathe.

What, boring?

“It’s boring,” she said barely audibly.

You shouldn't do stupid things even out of boredom.

Lisa thought he was smiling. She was angry, hated him and herself, and sat there. She didn’t know why she was sitting, just as she didn’t know why she was coming here. She almost never cried, because she was lonely and used to it, and now she wanted more than anything in the world to be pitied. To be spoken with kind words, stroked on the head, comforted and - she didn’t admit this to herself - maybe even kissed. But she couldn’t say that her mother kissed her for the last time five years ago and that she needed this kiss now as a guarantee of that wonderful tomorrow for which she lived on earth.

“Go to sleep,” he said. - I'm tired, it's too early for me to go.

And he yawned. Long, indifferent, with a howl. Lisa, biting her lips, rushed down, hit her knee painfully and flew out into the yard, slamming the door forcefully.

In the morning she heard how her father harnessed the official Dymok, how the guest said goodbye to his mother, how the gate creaked. She lay there pretending to be asleep, and tears crawled from under her closed eyelids.

At lunchtime the tipsy father returned.

With a thud, he poured prickly pieces of bluish crushed sugar out of his hat onto the table and said in surprise:

And he is a bird, our guest! Sahara told us to let us go, whatever. And we haven’t seen him in the general store for a year. Three whole kilos of sugar!...

Then he fell silent, patted his pockets for a long time and took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pouch:

“You need to study, Lisa. You become completely wild in the forest. Come in August: I’ll get you into a technical school with a dormitory.”

Signature and address. And nothing more - not even hello.

A month later, the mother died. The always gloomy father was now completely furious, drinking in the dark, and Lisa was still waiting for tomorrow, tightly locking the doors from her father’s friends at night. But from now on, this tomorrow was firmly connected with August, and, listening to the drunken screams behind the wall, Lisa re-read the worn-out note for the thousandth time.

But the war began, and instead of the city, Lisa ended up doing defense work. All summer she dug trenches and anti-tank fortifications, which the Germans carefully bypassed, got surrounded, got out of them and dug again, each time rolling further and further to the east. In late autumn, she ended up somewhere beyond Valdai, stuck to an anti-aircraft unit, and therefore was now running for the 171st time.

Lisa liked Vaskov right away: when he stood in front of their formation, blinking his sleepy eyes in confusion. I liked his firm laconicism, peasant slowness and that special, masculine thoroughness that is perceived by all women as a guarantee of the inviolability of the family hearth. What happened was that everyone started making fun of the commandant: it was considered good manners.

Liza did not participate in such conversations, but when the all-knowing Kiryanova announced with a laugh that the foreman could not resist the luxurious charms of the landlady, Liza suddenly flushed:

It's not true!

Fell in love! - Kiryanova gasped triumphantly. - Our Brichkina has fallen in love, girls! I fell in love with a military man!

Poor Lisa! - Gurvich sighed loudly. Then everyone started shouting and laughing, and Lisa burst into tears and ran into the forest.

She cried on a tree stump until Rita Osyanina found her.

What are you doing, stupid? We need to live easier. Easier, you know?

But Liza lived, suffocated from shyness, and the foreman - from service, and they would never have seen eye to eye if not for this incident. And so Lisa flew through the forest as if on wings.

“Afterwards we’ll sing with you, Lizaveta,” said the foreman. “We’ll carry out the combat order and let’s go.”

Lisa thought about his words and smiled, embarrassed by that powerful unfamiliar feeling that was stirring in her, flaring up on her elastic cheeks. And, thinking about him, she rushed past a noticeable pine tree, and when near the swamp she remembered her illnesses, she no longer wanted to return. There was enough windfall here, and Lisa quickly chose a suitable pole.

Before climbing into the flabby muck, she listened secretly, and then busily took off her skirt.

Having tied it to the top of the pole, she carefully tucked her tunic under her belt and, pulling up her blue official leggings, stepped into the swamp.

This time no one walked ahead, pushing aside the dirt.

The liquid mess clung to her thighs and dragged behind her, and Lisa struggled forward, gasping and swaying. Step by step, numb from the icy water and not taking my eyes off the two pine trees on the island.

But it was not the dirt, not the cold, not the living, breathing soil under her feet that scared her.

The loneliness was terrible, the dead, deathly silence hanging over the brown swamp.

Lisa felt almost animal horror, and this horror not only did not disappear, but with each step it accumulated more and more in her, and she trembled helplessly and pitifully, afraid to look back, make an extra movement, or even sigh loudly.

She barely remembered how she got to the island. She crawled on her knees, leaned face down into the rotting grass and began to cry. She sobbed, smeared tears across her thick cheeks, shuddering from the cold, loneliness and disgusting fear.

She jumped up - the tears were still flowing. Sniffling, she passed the island, took aim at how to go further, and, without resting or gathering her strength, climbed into the swamp.

At first it was shallow, and Lisa managed to calm down and even became cheerful. The last piece remained and, no matter how difficult it was, then there was dry land, solid, native land with grass and trees. And Lisa was already thinking about where she could wash herself, remembering all the puddles and casks and wondering whether she should rinse her clothes or wait until she left. There was absolutely nothing left there, she remembered the road well, with all the turns, and boldly expected to reach her people in an hour and a half.

It became more difficult to walk, the swamp reached up to the knees, but now with every step that shore was approaching, and Lisa could clearly, right down to the cracks, see the stump from which the foreman had jumped into the swamp. He jumped funny, clumsily: he could barely stand on his feet.

And Lisa again began to think about Vaskov and even began to smile. They will sing, they will definitely even sing, when the commandant fulfills the combat order and returns again to the patrol. You just have to cheat, trick him and lure him into the forest in the evening. And then... There we’ll see who’s stronger: she or the landlady, who has only the advantages of being under the same roof as the head lady.

A huge brown bubble swelled in front of her. It was so unexpected, so fast and so close to her that Lisa, not having time to scream, instinctively rushed to the side. Just a step to the side, and my legs immediately lost support, hung somewhere in an unsteady void, and the swamp squeezed my hips like a soft vice. The long-accumulated horror suddenly splashed out at once, sending a sharp pain through my heart. Trying at all costs to hold on and climb out onto the path, Lisa leaned with all her weight onto the pole. The dry pole crunched loudly, and Lisa fell face down into the cold liquid mud.

There was no land. Her legs were slowly, terribly slowly dragged down, her arms rowed the swamp uselessly, and Lisa, gasping for breath, squirmed in the liquid mess.

And the path was somewhere very close:

a step, half a step away from her, but these half steps were no longer possible to take.

P omgite!. For help!. P help!.

An eerie lonely cry rang for a long time over the indifferent rusty swamp. He flew up to the tops of the pines, got tangled in the young foliage of the alder, fell until he wheezed, and again, with the last of his strength, flew up to the cloudless May sky.

Lisa saw this beautiful blue sky for a long time. Wheezing, she spat out dirt and reached out, reached out to him, reached out and believed.

The sun slowly rose above the trees, its rays fell on the swamp, and Lisa saw its light for the last time - warm, unbearably bright, like the promise of tomorrow. And until the last moment she believed that this would happen tomorrow for her too...

While they were laughing and eating (of course, dry rations), the enemy pulled away far away. He escaped, to put it simply, from the noisy shore, from loud women and invisible men, took refuge in the forests, hid and - as if it never happened.

Vaskov didn’t like this. He had experience - not only combat, but also hunting - and understood that it was not good to let the enemy and the bear out of sight. The goblin knows what else he will come up with, where he will go, where he will leave secrets. It immediately turned out just like on a bad hunt, when you don’t understand who is hunting who: the bear is after you or you are after the bear. And to prevent this from happening, the foreman left the girls on the shore, and he and Osyanina carried out a search.

Follow me, Margarita. I became - you became, I lay down - you lay down. Playing hovanki with a German is almost like playing with death, so get into your ears all the time. In the ears and in the eyes.

He himself stayed ahead. From bush to bush, from rock to rock. He peered forward painfully, pressed his ear to the ground, sniffed the air - he was all cocked, like a grenade.

Having looked at everything and heard enough to hear it, he moved his hand a little - and Osyanina immediately approached him. The two of them silently listened to see if a dead tree would crunch somewhere, if a fool would wander off, and again the foreman, bending down, slid forward like a shadow, into the next shelter, and Rita remained in place, listening for the two of them.

So they walked along the ridge, got out to the main position, and then into the pine forest, along which Brichkina, having bypassed the Germans in the morning, went to the forest. Everything was still quiet and peaceful, as if there were no saboteurs in nature, but Fedot Evgrafych did not allow himself or the junior sergeant to think about it.

Behind the pine forest lay the mossy, gently sloping shore of Lake Legontov, covered in boulders. The forest began at a distance from it, on a hillock, and a gnarled birch forest and rare round dances of squat fir trees led to it.

Here the foreman lingered: he searched the bushes with binoculars, listened, and then, standing up, sniffed for a long time the weak breeze that was creeping along the slope to the lake surface. Rita, without moving, lay obediently next to her, feeling with annoyance how her clothes were slowly getting wet on the moss.

Can you hear it? - Vaskov asked quietly and laughed as if to himself: - Culture let the German down: he wanted coffee.

Why do you think so?

It smells like smoke, so we sat down to breakfast. Are they all just sixteen?...

After thinking, he carefully leaned the rifle against the pine tree, pulled the belt tighter, and sat down:

We'll have to count them, Margarita, to see if anyone got away. Listen to this. If the shooting starts, leave immediately, leave that very second. Take the girls and head straight to the east, all the way to the canal. There you will report about the German, although, I think, they will already know about it, because Lizaveta Brichkina is about to run to the crossing. I got it?

No, said Rita. - And you?

Give it up, Osyanina,” the foreman said sternly. - We’re not out here picking mushrooms and berries. If they find me, then they won’t let me out alive, don’t doubt it. And so leave immediately. Is the order clear?

Rita remained silent.

What should I answer, Osyanina?

Clear - must answer.

The foreman grinned and, bending down, ran to the nearest boulder.

Rita looked after him all the time, but never noticed when he disappeared: as if he had suddenly dissolved among the gray mossy boulders. The skirt and sleeves of the tunic were soaked through; she crawled back and sat on a stone, listening to the peaceful noise of the forest.

She waited almost calmly, firmly believing that nothing could happen. Her entire upbringing was aimed at expecting only happy endings: doubting luck for her generation amounted to almost betrayal. She had, of course, felt fear and uncertainty, but the inner conviction of a successful outcome was always stronger than the real circumstances.

But no matter how Rita listened, no matter how much she expected, Fedot Evgrafych appeared unexpectedly and silently: the pine paws trembled slightly. Silently he took the rifle, nodded to it, and dived into the thicket. I stopped already in the rocks.

You are a bad fighter, Comrade Osyanina. Worthless fighter. He didn’t speak angrily, but with concern, and Rita smiled:

She spread out on the stump like a family grouse. And the order was to lie down.

It's very wet there, Fedot Evgrafych.

Wet... - the sergeant-major repeated dissatisfiedly. - You're lucky that they drink coffee, otherwise they would have made ends meet.

So, you guessed it?

I'm not a fortune teller, Osyanina, Ten people are eating - I've seen them. Two are a secret: I saw them too. The rest, it must be assumed, are serving from other ends. We settled in for what seemed like a long time: they were drying socks by the fire. So it's time for us to change our location. I’m climbing on the rocks here, I’ll look around, and you, Margarita, follow the soldiers. And secretly - here. And no laughter!

I understand.

Yes, I laid out my shag there to dry: grab it, be a friend. And little things of course.

I’ll take it, Fedot Evgrafych.

While Osyanina was running after the fighters, Vaskov was climbing all the nearby and distant stones on his stomach. He looked, listened, sniffed out everything, but neither the Germans nor the German spirit could be sensed anywhere, and the foreman cheered up a little. After all, according to all the calculations, it turned out that Liza Brichkina was about to get to the patrol, report, and an invisible network of a raid would be woven around the saboteurs. By evening - well, by dawn at the latest! - help will come, he will put her on the trail and... and will take his girls behind the rocks. Farther away so that they don’t hear the swearing, because it won’t be possible without hand-to-hand combat.

And again he identified his fighters from afar. They didn’t seem to make any noise, didn’t blurt out, didn’t whisper, but - come on! - The commandant knew for sure that they were coming a good mile away. Either they were puffing hard from zeal, or they were carried forward by cologne, and only Fedot Evgrafych was quietly glad that the saboteurs did not have a real hunter-trade.

He wanted to smoke until he was sad, because he had been climbing rocks and groves for three hours, and out of temptation he left his pouch on a boulder with the girls. I met them, warned them to keep quiet, and asked about the pouch.

And Osyanina just clasped her hands:

I forgot! Fedot Evgrafych, dear, I forgot!... The foreman grunted: oh, you, the unconscious female sex, the devil, shake you! If he had been a man, it couldn’t have been simpler: he would have beaten Vaskov into seven overpowering strokes and sent the bungler back for the pouch. And then I had to put on a smile:

Well, nothing, okay. Shag and it's all over. You haven't forgotten my sidor, by any chance?

UDC 629.039.58 A.N. Lutsenko (Far Eastern State Transport University, Khabarovsk; e-mail: [email protected]) ON THE APPLICATION OF INNOVATIVE SORBENTS AND REPORT ON RESEARCH WORK

In the winter of 1942, the 367th Infantry Division was almost entirely left lying in the snow near the Maselskaya and Vanzozero stations in Karelia. The division, formed in Shadrinsk, arrived on the Karelian Front in December 1941.

What happened here, at an unknown junction in these cold winter days of 1942?

The Karelian front existed for the longest time (three and a half years), its length was 1600 km. There were no major battles comparable to the Battle of Stalingrad or the Battle of Kursk, but the direction was very important. A separate German army, “Norway,” was rushing to Murmansk, where aid from the West was arriving under Lend-Lease, and Finnish troops sought to cut the Kirov Railway and the White Sea-Baltic Canal, through which this aid was supplied to the fronts from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk.

The Karelian Front was supposed to liberate a section of the Kirov Railway, capture the city of Medvezhyegorsk and then advance to the border with Finland. For this purpose, the Massel operational group was created, which included the 186th, 263rd, 289th, 367th rifle divisions, 61st, 65th, 66th, 85th naval rifle brigades and 227th I am a separate tank company.

The winter battles of 1942 became the bloodiest battles on the Karelian Front. Untrained soldiers who had never fought were thrown into battle. But the enemy was strong and well trained. Well armed. Had experience.

The film “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” based on the novel by B. Vasiliev, shows the events of this period, however, they took place at another crossing of the Kirov Railway in the marshy areas of the Karelian Isthmus.

What was the 367th Rifle Division that arrived in Karelia from the Trans-Urals like?

The 367th Rifle Division was formed according to the directive of the Military Council of the Ural Military District dated August 18, 1941 in the city of Shadrinsk, Chelyabinsk Region. Two months were allotted for the formation of the division and by September 1, 1941 it was completed. The division included 1217, 1219, 1221 rifle regiments, 928 artillery regiment.

Training of personnel took place “conditionally”. During the exercises, we practiced with wooden mock-ups, because there weren’t enough rifles for everyone. They fired in turns from 5–10 rifles per company, two guns per division. In hand-to-hand combat they learned to use a sapper shovel.

After its formation, the division was sent as a reserve to Moscow, and when the Germans were thrown back from the capital, it was transported to the Karelian Front.

By the time it arrived at the front, the division consisted of 10,910 people. The command staff of the 367th division was predominantly from the reserve. Platoon commanders are recent graduates of infantry schools. The privates and sergeants were born between 1900 and 1913 (that is, they were 36–40 years old), had no military training, and did not own skis. Most of the staff commanders had little experience in staff work. Of the personnel, only 4% had military experience.

The material part of the division was completed on its way to the Karelian Front. The 122 mm howitzers and 76 mm guns did not have charging boxes, and there were not enough limbers. There was no anti-aircraft artillery, and the mortars did not have sights. There were no artillery instruments. There were 9 self-loading rifles instead of 3,721 in the state, 26 sniper rifles instead of 108.

In December 1941, while unloading the division at the Maselskaya station junction, artillery shelling began, and then aircraft attacked. This is how the first losses appeared.

And here is the front... From January 1, 1942, the division fought offensive battles for the Kirov Railway, and the enemy suffered significant damage in manpower and equipment. The enemy, having lost important strategic objects, began to intensively prepare for revenge.

It should be noted that the 367th Division was simply not ready for combat. The personnel were wearing only leather shoes, and there was a lack of warm clothes. The frost was forty degrees, there were meter-long snowdrifts all around, the fighters' feet were constantly wet - the swampy soil does not freeze in these parts. There was nowhere to warm up or dry out, you couldn’t light a fire, certain death, so frostbite was common due to poorly dried shoes. At the same time, the division’s political department reported on the general laxity of the soldiers: “...they walk without a belt, they don’t wash or shave for weeks, they forget about greetings and repeating orders... In connection with the issuance of northern rations, cases of intoxication have become more frequent.”

Our troops were opposed by the 8th Finnish Infantry Division under the command of Colonel Vinel. Armament - Suomi machine guns, plenty of warm woolen underwear, skis were a must, there were biscuits and canned food. The personnel gained experience during winter battles with the Red Army.

The comparison is far from being in our favor.

On February 6, 1942, at 2.30 am, the Finns, with the support of artillery and mortars, went on the offensive in the zone of the 367th division. They broke through its front line in the area of the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the 1221st Infantry Regiment, occupied the 14th crossing, cutting the Kirov Railway. The commander of the first battalion of the 1219th regiment, Lieutenant Kopytin, without orders, withdrew his battalion from the occupied line. The Finns penetrated into the resulting gap and surrounded part of the formations of the 1217th and 1219th regiments. The attempt to escape the encirclement failed, so a perimeter defense was organized. The next day, the enemy fired heavy machine-gun and mortar fire into the encircled area. For three days the regiment fought with the Finns and Germans. 24 enemy attacks were repulsed.

During this time, all the cartridges and grenades were used up. The 289th Infantry Division and the 61st Naval Brigade, who tried to break through to the encircled area, lay down in the snow under heavy enemy fire, suffering heavy losses. Without raising their heads, the soldiers listened to the cannonade in the Finnish rear - the dying 1217th regiment continued to fight! Holding on to a height that was being shot at from all sides, the Urals fought off one attack after another, withstanding the continuous onslaught, the soldiers believed in help, which never came to them. By the end of February 7, the survivors made a breakthrough...

Winter battles 1941–1942 remained in the memory of our opponents – the Finns. One of them recalled: “On both sides of the road there were so many Russian soldiers, dead and frozen, that the dead, standing, supported each other.”

In January-February 1942, the 367th Infantry Division lost 7,610 people: 1,141 were killed and died, 2,822 were wounded and shell-shocked, 655 were sick and frostbitten, 2,967 were missing.

The 1217th Infantry Regiment was almost completely lost - only 28 people survived! Almost all the dead remained lying in the forests and swamps.

Most of them have not been found to date...

In 2005, in honor of the 367th Infantry Regiment, a Poklonny Cross was installed on the Settlement in Shadrintsy - a wooden cross with crossbars 7 meters high.

On February 24, 1942, the remaining units of the 367th Infantry Division were withdrawn for reorganization. The revived division fought bravely and steadfastly in the Far North, in difficult climatic conditions.

For valor and courage the division was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. The capital saluted the soldiers of the 367th division three times; the most distinguished soldiers and sergeants participated in the Victory Parade.

Literature

Combat path of the 1217th Infantry Regiment of the 367th Infantry Division // vest68.ucor.ru>publ|grochev_filaret_stepanovich|1…. - Title. from the screen.

Mileshina, L.A. About the 367th Infantry Division / L.A. Mileshina // Milestones of history: materials (with international participation) of the student historical and local history conference (April 4–5, 2007, Shadrinsk). – Shadrinsk, 2007. – P. 176–179.

Osintsev, L. Reading letters from the front / Leonid Osintsev // I am writing to you, living today... / Yuri Voronin. – Shadrinsk, 2011. – P. 10–27.

Plotnikova, A.V. Formation of the 1217th Infantry Regiment of the 367th Infantry Division (1941) / A.V. Plotnikova // Shadrinsk during the war / comp. and resp. ed. S. B. Borisov. – Shadrinsk, 2005. – Book. third. – pp. 36–38.

Rybina, V. The path to immortality / Vera Rybina // Iset. – 2006. – August 16–22. (No. 33). – P. 24. – (Memorable date).

Tsybina, E. Tragedy of the 367th Division / E. Tsybina // Iset. – 1992. – November 26. (No. 168). – P. 4. – (Echo of War).

Shestakov, V.P. Death of the 367th Infantry Division / V.P. Shestakov // ust-miass.ru>indekx.pnp/istoria-sela…vek/113-367. - Title. from the screen.

This and other literature on the topic can be found in the local history department of the Central Library. A. N. Zyryanova (Sverdlov St., 57).

Fedorova O. Yu., leading bibliographer of the IBO Central Bank named after. A. N. Zyryanova.

In May 1942, the 171st siding, where trains did not stop, seemed like a deep rear resort. Commandant Sergeant Major Vaskov, who divorced his wife, who ran away with the regimental veterinarian, and buried his son, wrote endless reports about the drunkenness of rear soldiers. Tired of complaints, his superiors send him completely non-drinking fighters - two female squads of anti-aircraft gunners.

Women's team

For a 32-year-old sergeant major with 4 years of education, this becomes a new challenge. Almost all girls have a good education and urban habits. The commander of the first squad, Rita Osyanina, after the death of her husband, sends her son to his parents and volunteers for the front. She accepts the transfer to the rear with joy, since her parents and son live not far from the crossing.

Zhenya Komelkova is new in this unit, but the most exciting. She crossed the front line after the Germans shot her mother, sister and brother in front of her eyes in the occupied territory. With her appearance, Rita's soul thaws. And Galka Chetvertak, who was brought up in an orphanage and seemed to everyone to be a runt, simply blossoms after Zhenya washes her in the bathhouse and adjusts her tunic to her figure.

A woman remains a woman even in war.

However, such a relationship with calling people by name and incessant laundry seems completely unregulated to the foreman. However, he still does not know about Rita’s unauthorized absences. At night she goes into the city to feed her parents and son. During one of her returns, she discovers two Germans not far from the junction, and reports this to the foreman. He receives an order from his superiors to detain and neutralize the saboteurs.

Across

Assuming that the final goal of the German spies is the Kirov Railway, which can only be reached along a small mountain range between two lakes, the foreman decides to go there by a short road through the swamps. Since there are reportedly two saboteurs, Vaskov takes with him - in addition to Rita, Zhenya and Galina - Lisa Brichkina and Sonya Gurvich.

Sonya comes from Minsk, where her father worked as a doctor. She studied at the university, speaks German well, and goes to the front following her fellow volunteer student. Lisa is closest to Vaskov in her pre-war lifestyle. She is the daughter of a forester. Due to her mother's illness, she did not finish school. I was going to go to technical school, but the war got in the way. She also understands and even likes the foreman.

Vaskov leads the fighters through an impassable swamp along a path that is known only to local residents. The detachment safely gets to the lake, where they are supposed to meet the saboteurs, before the Germans. The enemy appears only the next morning, but there are not two of them - but sixteen. The sergeant major decides to send Lisa on a mission to report on the change in the operational situation.

The remaining fighters imitate logging operations while waiting for reinforcements. Vaskov is cutting down trees, Zhenya and the girls are noisily splashing in the water. The Germans do not dare to walk along the ridge and retreat back to the lake. The foreman orders a change of position, but forgets the pouch in its original place. Sonya, who returns for tobacco, runs into two Germans, at whose hands she dies.

Last Stand

The remaining four take on an unequal battle, being the first to open fire to kill. The Germans retreat without having information about the defenders. Vaskov also wants to clarify the situation, and takes fighter Galina Chetvertak with him on reconnaissance. Rita and Zhenya accuse her of cowardice - she is simply frightened by Sonya's death. But, being in a state of shock, the girl shows carelessness: she dies herself and reveals the position of her unit.

The foreman leads the Germans with him to the swamp. Wounded in the arm, he still makes it to a small island. There he notices Lisa's skirt in the quagmire, and realizes that there is nowhere to wait for reinforcements. He is looking for Rita and Zhenya. The three of them prepare for the final battle. Although they kill several saboteurs, the forces are clearly not equal.

Rita receives a severe shrapnel wound from a grenade. Vaskov carries her deep into the forest. And Zhenya, grabbing the machine gun, leads the Germans in the other direction. Even when wounded, she does not hide in the bushes, but shoots back to the last bullet. But when the ammunition runs out, the Germans find her and shoot her at point-blank range.

Vaskov leaves Rita a pistol with two cartridges and goes on reconnaissance without a weapon. But soon he hears a single shot behind him. Realizing that he was left alone, the foreman returns to bury the girls - and then, with a single cartridge in his revolver and a grenade without a fuse, he leaves to meet the Germans.

He is looking for an abandoned hut where the saboteurs made a halt. Having eliminated the sentry, Vaskov bursts inside and kills one of the Germans with the last shot. Threatening the remaining four saboteurs with an unloaded pistol and a dummy grenade, he forces them to tie each other up and delivers the Germans to the 171st crossing.

Decades later, Vaskov returns here with Rita’s son, captain of the missile forces, to erect a marble tombstone at the site of the death of his brave anti-aircraft gunners.

Boris Vasiliev's story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet...” was published in 1969. According to the author himself, the plot was based on real events. Vasiliev was inspired by the story of how seven soldiers stopped a German sabotage group, preventing it from blowing up a strategically important section of the Kirov railway. Only the sergeant was destined to survive. After writing a few pages of his new work, Vasiliev realized that the plot was not new. The story will simply not be noticed or appreciated. Then the author decided that the main characters should be young girls. It was not customary to write about women in the war in those years. Vasiliev's innovation allowed him to create a work that stood out sharply among his peers.

Boris Vasiliev's story has been filmed several times. One of the most original film adaptations was the Russian-Chinese project of 2005. In 2009, the film “Valor” was released in India based on the plot of the work of the Soviet writer.

The story takes place in May 1942. The main character Fedot Evgrafych Vaskov is serving at the 171st crossing somewhere in the Karelian outback. Vaskov is not satisfied with the behavior of his subordinates. Forced to remain idle, soldiers start drunken brawls out of boredom and enter into illicit relationships with local women. Fedot Evgrafych repeatedly appealed to his superiors with a request to send him non-drinking anti-aircraft gunners. In the end, a department of girls comes into Vaskov's hands.

It takes a long time for a trusting relationship to be established between the patrol commandant and the new anti-aircraft gunners. “Mossy Stump” is not capable of causing anything but irony in girls. Vaskov, not knowing how to behave with subordinates of the opposite sex, prefers rude and indifferent communication.

Soon after the squad of anti-aircraft gunners arrives, one of the girls notices two fascist saboteurs in the forest. Vaskov goes on a combat mission, taking with him a small group of fighters, which included Sonya Gurvich, Rita Osyanina, Galya Chetvertak, Lisa Brichkina and Zhenya Komelkova.

Fedot Evgrafych managed to stop the saboteurs. He returned alive from a combat mission alone.

Characteristics

Fedot Vaskov

Sergeant Major Vaskov is 32 years old. Several years ago his wife left him. The son whom Fedot Evgrafych was going to raise on his own died. The life of the main character gradually lost its meaning. He feels lonely and useless.

Vaskov's illiteracy prevents him from expressing his emotions correctly and beautifully. But even the foreman’s awkward and comical speech cannot hide his high spiritual qualities. He becomes truly attached to each of the girls in his squad, treating them like a caring, loving father. In front of the survivors Rita and Zhenya, Vaskov no longer hides his feelings.

Sonya Gurvich

The large and friendly Jewish family of Gurvich lived in Minsk. Sonya's father was a local doctor. Having entered Moscow University, Sonya met her love. However, young people were never able to obtain higher education and start a family. Sonya's lover went to the front as a volunteer. The girl also followed his example.

Gurvich is distinguished by brilliant erudition. Sonya was always an excellent student and spoke German fluently. The latter circumstance was the main reason why Vaskov took Sonya on the mission. He needed a translator to communicate with captured saboteurs. But Sonya did not fulfill the mission determined by the foreman: she was killed by the Germans.

Rita Osyanina

Rita became a widow early, having lost her husband on the second day of the war. Leaving her son Albert with her parents, Rita sets out to avenge her husband. Osyanina, who has become the head of the anti-aircraft gunners’ department, asks her superiors to transfer her to the 171st crossing, which is located near the small town where her relatives live. Now Rita has the opportunity to often be at home and bring groceries to her son.

Having been seriously wounded in her last battle, the young widow thinks only of the son her mother will have to raise. Osyanina makes Fedot Evgrafych promise to take care of Albert. Fearing being captured alive, Rita decides to shoot herself.

Galya Chetvertak

Chetvertak grew up in an orphanage, after which she entered a library technical school. Galya always seemed to float with the flow, not knowing exactly where and why she was going. The girl does not experience the hatred for the enemy that overcomes Rita Osyanina. She is not able to hate even her immediate offenders, preferring children's tears to adult aggression.

Galya constantly feels awkward, out of place. She has difficulty adapting to her environment. Friends in arms accuse Galya of cowardice. But the girl is not just afraid. She has a strong aversion to destruction and death. Galya unknowingly pushes herself to death in order to get rid of the horrors of war once and for all.

Lisa Brichkina

The forester's daughter Liza Brichkina became the only anti-aircraft gunner who fell in love with Sergeant Major Vaskov at first sight. A simple girl, who was unable to graduate from school due to her mother’s serious illness, noticed a kindred spirit in Fedot Evgrafych. The author speaks of his heroine as a person who spent most of her life waiting for happiness. However, the expectations were not met.

Liza Brichkina drowned while crossing the swamp, having gone on the orders of Sergeant Major Vaskov for reinforcements.

Zhenya Komelkova

The Komelkov family was shot by the Germans right in front of Zhenya a year before the events described. Despite the bereavement, the girl did not lose her liveliness of character. The thirst for life and love pushes Zhenya into the arms of the married Colonel Luzhin. Komelkova does not want to destroy the family. She is only afraid of not having time to receive its sweetest fruits from life.

Zhenya was never afraid of anything and was confident in herself. Even in the last battle, she does not believe that the next moment could be her last. It is simply impossible to die at 19 years old, being young and healthy.

The main idea of the story

Extraordinary circumstances do not change people. They only help reveal existing character traits. Each of the girls in Vaskov’s small squad continues to be themselves, adhere to their ideals and outlook on life.

Analysis of the work

Summary “And the dawns here are quiet...” (Vasiliev) can only reveal the essence of this work, profound in its tragedy. The author strives to show not just the death of several girls. In each of them the whole world perishes. Sergeant Major Vaskov observes not only the fading of young lives, he sees in these deaths the death of the future. None of the anti-aircraft gunners will be able to become either a wife or a mother. Their children were not yet born, which means they will not give birth to future generations.

The popularity of Vasiliev's story is due to the contrast used in it. Young anti-aircraft gunners would hardly attract the attention of readers. The appearance of girls gives rise to hope for an interesting plot in which love will certainly be present. Recalling the well-known aphorism that war does not have a feminine face, the author contrasts the tenderness, playfulness and softness of young female anti-aircraft gunners with the cruelty, hatred and inhumanity of the situation in which they found themselves.