Liberation of Koenigsberg and East Prussia. Capture of the settlements of East Prussia On the southern borders

"Miracle on the Marne". Russian offensive in East Prussia! 1914–1918 First World War. "Miracle on the Marne", salvation from the defeat of the Anglo-French troops and Paris is provided by Russian blood, the offensive of Russian troops against the Germans on the eastern front ("East Prussian

We drive further along the highway in the passenger car of the headquarters of the 11th army towards Königsberg to find the 5th artillery corps there. The highway is full of heavy trucks.
The villages we meet on our way are partly badly destroyed. It is striking that we come across very few wrecked Soviet tanks, not at all like it was in the first days of the offensive.
Along the way, we meet columns of the civilian population, which, under the protection of our submachine gunners, are sent to the rear, away from the front. Some Germans ride in large covered wagons. Teenagers, men, women and girls go on foot. All good clothes. It would be interesting to talk with them about the future.

Soon we stop for the night. Finally we got to a rich country! Everywhere you can see herds of livestock roaming the fields. Yesterday and today we boiled and fried two chickens a day.
Everything in the house is very well equipped. The Germans left almost all their household belongings. I am compelled to think again about what a great grief this war brings with it.
It passes like a fiery whirlwind through cities and villages, leaving behind smoking ruins, trucks and tanks mangled by explosions, and mountains of corpses of soldiers and civilians.
Now let the Germans see and feel what war is! How much grief is still in this world! I hope that Adolf Hitler does not have long to wait for the noose prepared for him.

January 26, 1945. Petersdorf near Velau. - Here, on this sector of the front, our troops were four kilometers from Koenigsberg. The 2nd Belorussian Front went to the sea near Danzig.
Thus, East Prussia is completely cut off. In fact, it is already almost in our hands. We are driving along Velau. The city is still burning, it is completely destroyed. Everywhere smoke and corpses of the Germans. On the streets you can see many guns abandoned by the Germans and the corpses of German soldiers in the sewers.
These are signs of the brutal defeat of the German troops. Everyone is celebrating the victory. Soldiers cook food on a fire. Fritz abandoned everything. Entire herds of livestock roam the fields. The surviving houses are full of excellent furniture and utensils. On the walls you can see paintings, mirrors, photographs.

Many houses were set on fire by our infantry. Everything happens as the Russian proverb says: "As it comes around, it will respond!" The Germans did this in Russia in 1941 and 1942, and now in 1945 it echoed here in East Prussia.
I see a weapon covered with a knitted blanket being carried past. Nice disguise! On another gun lies a mattress, and on the mattress, wrapped in a blanket, a Red Army soldier sleeps.
To the left of the highway, you can see an interesting picture: two camels are being led there. A captive Fritz with a bandaged head is led past us. Angry soldiers shout in his face: "Well, did you conquer Russia?" With their fists and the butts of their machine guns, they urge him on, pushing him in the back.

January 27, 1945. The village of Starkenberg. - The village looks very peaceful. The room of the house where we stayed is light and cozy. From afar comes the sound of cannonade. This is a battle in Koenigsberg. The position of the Germans is hopeless.
And now the time comes when we can pay for everything. Ours treated East Prussia no worse than the Germans did with the Smolensk region. We hate the Germans and Germany with all our heart.
For example, in one of the houses of the village, our guys saw a murdered woman with two children. And on the street you can often see dead civilians. The Germans themselves deserved this on our part, because they were the first to behave this way towards the civilian population of the occupied regions.
One only needs to remember Majdanek and the theory of the superman to understand why our soldiers bring East Prussia to such a state with such satisfaction. But German composure in Majdanek was a hundred times worse. In addition, the Germans glorified the war!

January 28, 1945. We played cards until two o'clock in the morning. The houses were abandoned by the Germans in a chaotic state. The Germans had a lot of all sorts of property. But now everything is in complete disarray. The furniture in the houses is just great. Each house is full of a variety of utensils. Most Germans lived quite well.
War, war - when will you end? For three years and seven months this destruction of human lives, the results of human labor and monuments of cultural heritage has been going on.
Towns and villages are burning, the treasures of thousands of years of labor are disappearing. And the nonentities in Berlin are doing their best to keep this one-of-a-kind battle in the history of mankind as long as possible. Therefore, hatred is born, which is poured out on Germany.
February 1, 1945. - In the village we saw a long column of modern slaves, whom the Germans drove to Germany from all over Europe. Our troops invaded Germany on a broad front. The allies are coming too. Yes, Hitler wanted to crush the whole world. Instead, he crushed Germany.

February 2, 1945. - We have arrived in Fuchsberg. Finally, we reached our destination - the headquarters of the 33rd Tank Brigade. I learned from a Red Army soldier from the 24th Tank Brigade that thirteen people from our brigade, including several officers, had been poisoned. They drank denatured alcohol. That's where the love of alcohol can lead!
On the way we met several columns of German civilians. Mostly women and children. Many carried their children in their arms. They looked pale and scared. When asked if they were Germans, they hastened to answer "Yes."
There was a clear stamp of fear on their faces. They had no reason to be glad that they were Germans. At the same time, quite nice faces could be seen among them.

Last night, the soldiers of the division told me about some things that can not be approved. In the house where the headquarters of the division was located, the evacuated women and children were placed at night.
Drunken soldiers began to come there one after another. They chose women for themselves, took them aside and raped them. There were several men for every woman.
Such behavior is unacceptable. Revenge, of course, is necessary, but not in this way, but with weapons. You can somehow understand those whose loved ones were killed by the Germans. But the rape of young girls - no, this is unacceptable!
In my opinion, the command must soon put an end to such crimes, as well as to the unnecessary destruction of property. For example, soldiers spend the night in some house, in the morning they leave and set fire to the house or recklessly break mirrors and break furniture.
After all, it is clear that all these things will one day be transported to Soviet Union. But while we live here and, carrying out soldier's service, we will continue to live. Such crimes only undermine the morale of the soldiers and weaken discipline, which leads to a decrease in combat capability."

September 1944 - February 1945

On January 19, 1945, he received an order by radio to remove posts, relocate a platoon to the village of T. and wait for further instructions.

Three months ago we already crossed the border of East Prussia.

One of the divisions of our army made a breach in the defensive barriers on the border.

The sappers filled up the ditch, destroyed five lines of barbed wire barriers and eliminated another ditch or rampart. Thus, a hole fifteen meters wide was formed in the barriers, inside which a country road from Poland to East Prussia passed ...

A hundred meters later the highway began, on the right and on the left there was a forest, a few kilometers - and the road to the Hollubien manor. It was a two-story, red-tiled house surrounded by all sorts of services.

Inside, the walls were decorated with carpets and tapestries from the 17th century.

In one of the offices, a picture of Rokotov hung on the wall, and next to and throughout the house there were many family photographs, daguerreotypes of the beginning of the century, generals, officers surrounded by smart ladies and children, then officers in helmets with shakos who returned from the war of 1914, and very recent photographs: boys with armbands with swastikas and their sisters, apparently students, and, finally, photographs of young SS lieutenants lost on the fronts of Russia, the last generation of this traditionally military aristocratic family.

Between the photographs hung family portraits of the Prussian barons, and suddenly again two paintings - one by Rokotov, and the other by Borovikovsky, trophy portraits of Russian generals, their children and wives.

Our infantrymen and tankers, who had visited this “museum” before us, did not remain indifferent to the hunting lodge of the Prussian kings: all the mirrors enclosed in gilded frames were broken by them, all the featherbeds and pillows were ripped open, all the furniture, all the floors were covered with a layer of fluff and feathers. In the corridor hung a tapestry reproducing the famous painting by Rubens "The Birth of Aphrodite from the Foam of the Sea." Someone, carrying out his revenge on the conquerors, wrote a popular word of three letters across with black oil paint.

Tapestry one and a half meters, with three letters, reminded me of my Moscow, pre-war passion for art. I rolled it up and put it in my captured German suitcase, which had served me as a pillow for three months.

Looked out the window.

The farmstead, which consisted of a traveling palace and brick service buildings, was surrounded by a cast-iron grating, and behind the grating, in the green meadows, as far as the eye could see, an incredible number of huge black-and-white thoroughbred cows wandered, groaned and mooed. A week has passed since the Germans - both the troops and the population - left without fighting. Nobody milked the cows.

Swollen udder, pain, moaning. Two of my telephone operators, formerly village girls, milked several buckets of milk, but it was bitter, and we did not drink it. Then I noticed the infernal fuss in the yard. One of the signalers found a chicken coop among the brick buildings, opened the iron gates, and hundreds of hungry thoroughbred chickens ran out into the yard. My soldiers seemed to go crazy. They ran and jumped like crazy, catching chickens and tearing off their heads. Then they found the boiler. Gutted and plucked.

There were already more than a hundred chickens in the cauldron, and there were forty-five people in my platoon. And so they cooked the broth and ate until, from fatigue, they fell down somewhere and fell asleep. It was the evening of our first day in East Prussia.

Two hours later, my entire platoon fell ill. They woke up, quickly jumped up and ran behind the chicken coop.

In the morning, a messenger from the company headquarters arrived in a truck and unfolded a topographic map.

A few kilometers from the border, and therefore, from us, was the rich East Prussian city of Goldap.

The day before, our divisions surrounded it, but there were no residents or German soldiers in the city, and when the regiments and divisions entered the city, the generals and officers completely lost control over them. Infantrymen and tankers fled to apartments and shops.

Through broken shop windows, all the contents of stores were dumped onto the sidewalks of the streets.

Thousands of pairs of shoes, dishes, radios, dinner sets, all kinds of household and pharmacy goods and products - all mixed up.

And clothes, linen, pillows, featherbeds, blankets, paintings, gramophones and musical instruments were thrown out of the windows of the apartments. Barricades were set up in the streets. And it was at this time that the German artillery and mortars began to work. Several German reserve divisions almost instantly threw our demoralized units out of the city. But at the request of the front headquarters, it was already reported to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief about the capture of the first German city. I had to take the city again. However, the Germans again knocked out ours, but did not enter it themselves. And the city became neutral.

We run behind the barn.

In the yard, two soldiers from a separate anti-aircraft artillery brigade say that the city has changed hands three times already, and this morning it has become neutral again, but the road is under fire. My God!

See the old German city with your own eyes! I get into the car with the former civilian driver Corporal Starikov. Hurry, hurry! We rush along the highway, mines are falling to the right and left of us. Just in case, I duck, but the firing zone is behind me. And in front, as on captured German postcards, covered with red tiles, between some marble fountains and monuments at crossroads, pointed houses with weather vanes.

We stop in the center of an almost empty city.

Europe! Everything is interesting!

But this is AWOL, we must immediately return to the unit.

All the doors of the apartments are open, and on the beds there are real pillows in pillowcases, blankets in duvet covers, and in the kitchen, in multi-colored tubes, aromatic spices. In the pantries - jars with homemade canned food, soups and a variety of main courses, and something that you never dreamed of in a dream - in corked half-liter jars (what kind of technology without heating?) the freshest butter. Own production of wine, and liqueurs, and tinctures, and Italian vermouths, and cognacs.

And in the wardrobes on hangers are new, different sizes, civil suits, troikas. Another ten minutes. We can't help but change our clothes and, like girls, we circle in front of the mirrors. God we are beautiful!

But time!

We quickly change clothes, throw pillows, blankets, feather beds, watches, lighters out of the windows. I'm tormented by thoughts. I remembered at that moment how a few months ago I came to Moscow for five days.

The shelves in the stores are empty, everything is on the cards. How happy my mother was about my additional officer's ration - a can of combined fat and two cans of American pork stew, and even every meal that I received on a ten-day travel certificate, somewhere in the officer's canteen in Syromyatniki and brought it home.

And the housemates are half-starved.

Why am I? And here. We, half-starved and tortured, are winning, and the Germans lost the war, but they do not need anything, they are full.

I thought about this when, with Starikov, I filled the back of the truck with pillows, feather beds, blankets in order to distribute them to all my soldiers so that they could sleep like a human for at least three nights. They haven't seen pillows for three, and some for all six years.

We are not alone in the city. Like us, several dozen soldiers and officers from other military units of our army collect trophies, and trucks of various systems from one and a half to Studebakers and Willis - either thirty, or already forty. And suddenly a German Focke-Wulf appears over the city - such a fidgety and terribly maneuverable German intelligence officer - and after about ten minutes the German batteries begin shelling the city. We move quickly. Shells explode ahead and behind us, and we are entangled in unfamiliar lanes and streets. But I have a compass, we keep heading east and, in the end, rushing past our burning abandoned trucks, we get onto the highway we came along, again we get under fire, but we are lucky, and in the evening we drive up to the headquarters of our company.

The commander of our separate company, instead of Captain Rozhitsky, who was promoted in rank and rank and sent to the east as part of several units of the 31st Army, was my friend, Senior Lieutenant Alexei Tarasov. For a whole year, one orderly for two, one dugout for two, a candidate of technical sciences, an artist. I remember how he mocked the cretin bosses.

He speaks with a colonel or general, stands at attention.

Yes, Comrade General!

And suddenly imperceptibly somehow bends. It happens in an instant, and it's like a different person. The figure, the face change, he is like two drops of water similar to the one he is talking to, but a complete idiot: the tongue falls out of his mouth and hangs out, a freak, but absolutely in character. It is he who parodies army arrogance, and sometimes stupid, stubborn straightforwardness. And I see everything, inside the hamstrings are shaking with laughter, with fear for him, because the whole performance is arranged for me. A second - and he again stands at attention, eats with his eyes, reports, and the authorities have no idea about anything.

However, he remembered almost all of Blok, Baratynsky, Tyutchev, I read my poems to him, and how much and what we didn’t talk about: everything about ourselves, everything about the country, everything about art, we couldn’t live without each other.

Our quartermaster, senior lieutenant Shcherbakov, stole food, uniforms, exchanged from the population for moonshine and wine, and supplied companies of higher commanders at the expense of soldiers. Tarasov and I terribly hated him. When Tarasov became a company commander, he called Shcherbakov and told him everything. And he stopped stealing, but decided to take revenge on us on occasion and restore everything as it was. By the way, it wasn't just us.

Suspecting nothing, we swung at the system. Tarasov was the commander, at his request I was already the commander of a control platoon for two weeks ...

But I'm going back.

We come under fire, but we are lucky, in the evening we drive up to the headquarters of our company. This is a large one-story house.

Officers, telephone operators and telephone operators run out. I distribute pillows and blankets. Delight! Blankets in duvet covers! Pillows! They slept for three years - a backpack under their heads, covered themselves with overcoats, in winter they wrapped them around themselves. The evening will catch on the way - they kindled a fire, lay down on the snow around the fire, very close to each other. Winter. One side freezes, and the side facing the fire lights up. The attendant will wake up. You turn over to the other side, and everything starts all over again.

I invite Tarasov, Shcherbakov, put five bottles of wine with foreign labels on the table. We drink to victory. Let's go to sleep.

At three o'clock in the morning my orderly wakes me up.

Urgently to Tarasov. I go to Tarasov, and he has Shcherbakov, the driver Lebedev, the driver Petrov, two female signalmen. It turns out that after we parted ways in the evening, Shcherbakov, in agreement with Tarasov, sent my Starikov to neutral Goldap for trophies, and with him three soldiers and two telephone operators. And as soon as they reached the city center, a random German mine exploded next to our lorry.

Shrapnel pierced three tires, and Starikov was wounded by one of the fragments.

Dark starless night.

A neutral city, where both our and German scouts move with caution.

By the light of a flashlight, the girls, as best they could, bandaged the raving Starikov, carried the wounded man to an empty two-story house opposite our damaged car.

Two remained with him, and the rest - a soldier and two telephone operators - on foot, after an hour of wandering, they reached one of our advanced units, from there they contacted the company headquarters by phone. The duty officer woke Captain Tarasov, Senior Lieutenant Shcherbakov, who decided to immediately send two cars to Goldap for rescue, transportation to the Starikov hospital and repair and removal of our damaged lorry.

Tarasov called me because only I knew the only road to the cleared passage or passage through the border, where the sappers of our army filled up a ditch for ten meters and cleared a passage in six lines of barbed wire, next to the border sign indicating the entrance to East Prussia.

I sit in the car next to the driver Lebedev. Everyone has two machine guns and several grenades. I do remember the road. In front of the city, a kilometer of the highway being shot through, we rush at full speed. The city is dark and scary, and now and then come across broken cars and the corpses of our trophy workers, who were less fortunate than me. With difficulty, by the number, we find our car. We scream. A soldier and a telephone operator come out of the house.

While Lebedev and Petrov rearrange the wheels on the damaged car, just in case, we take up defense in the house. Starikov groans. Apart from the wheels, Starikov's car is in perfect order. You can leave in an hour.

I go out into the street, ten meters away the silhouettes of several cars. I approach: people are killed, cabins and engines are damaged, and bodies are loaded to the top with trophies. I order to fit our empty cars to the broken ones and reload the trophies from the bodies.

Time moves fast, it starts to brighten. Hurry, Hurry! And here we are, in three cars, moving off and along the already familiar streets we leave for the highway. Shells and mines are exploding to the right and left of us, but we safely enter the forest at full speed, then follow the signs to find field hospital, and at about six in the morning we drive into the courtyard of our headquarters platoon. All sleep. I lie down on the pillow, I wake up at ten o'clock.

There are two sentries near the cars. I want to see what we brought, but they won't let me near the cars. I find Tarasov, I ask, what's the matter? And he turns away, then suddenly with an evil face, an icy voice:

- Lieutenant Rabichev! March all around!

- Are you out of your mind? I tell my best friend. But the friend is no more. There are trophies and Shcherbakov. Shocked, I can not find a place for myself. This has never happened before in the entire war.

I am writing a report - a statement with a request to transfer me to work, instead of the commander of a control platoon, as a commander of a linear platoon, in order to go with divisions and regiments, away from the company and army headquarters.

There is no friendship - there are trophies. Back to Poland.

And here I am again with my telephone operators and telephone operators, with the orderly Korolev, on horseback, on foot, in passing cars. Three months. Relations with Tarasov are purely official, I look at him with contempt, he looks away. My former chaste friend, now a bosom drinking companion of the disgusting thief Shcherbakov. Meanwhile, our troops are leaving East Prussia, retreating to the territory of the former Polish Corridor and going on the defensive for three months. The Poles are friendly, but the existence is semi-beggarly. I go into the kitchen. For some reason the walls are black. I want to lean against the wall, and a swarm of flies rises into the air. And there are fleas in the house. But I have a huge double bed and a separate room. And the old owner kept the memory of pre-revolutionary Russia and the pre-revolutionary Russian ruble. Korolev buys a pig from him for one ruble.

“What are you doing,” I tell him, “this is a blatant deception. He thinks that this is a pre-revolutionary gold ruble.

I explain to the owner, but he does not believe me, and remains convinced that I am joking. Oh, pan lieutenant, oh, ruble! The whole army is taking advantage of the situation, and the Poles will understand that the Russians deceived them, after a few months, they will remember this and will not forgive.

Meanwhile, somewhere at the end of the third month of the defense, Tarasov calls me and, as if nothing had happened between us, persuades me to return to the company headquarters. The fact is that as a specialist he appreciates me extremely, my original proposals for improving the entire system of intra-army communications were highly appreciated, and personally I was thanked in the order along the front, and the order to start the offensive had already been received. East Prussia is ahead again. I saw the former Tarasov, he turned to me for help, the matter was important, and the duty demanded it. And I agreed to return to the headquarters, again became the commander of the control platoon.

For two days, having deprived ourselves of sleep and rest, Tarasov and I developed eighteen routes for each group of our signalmen for the week ahead. In order not to get into trouble, they coordinated redeployment plans with generals, chiefs of staff of corps and divisions, as well as with the army artillery commander, with a separate anti-aircraft artillery brigade, consistently brought platoon commanders, foreman of the company up to date. This was a new thing for us, at the level of even a separate army company, never practiced by anyone, and it was so beautiful on topographic maps and on the charts that we invented, made with love and in pre-formulated, printed and pre-distributed orders, which we felt themselves either as Benigsons or as Bagrations.

On the eve of the offensive, Shcherbakov was invited and for several hours they acquainted him with their plans. He had six covered trucks at his disposal, and according to the schedule, he had to quickly transfer people, equipment, cable, radio stations, weapons, and food to the designated points on time.

We could not even imagine that in order to compromise us in the eyes of the army command that believed in us, and to the detriment of the whole cause of the offensive, he would change everything.

He will send vehicles with weapons and equipment to completely different places than people.

I do not remember all the details, but our company was put out of action for two days, with difficulty brought into working condition and lagged behind the advancing divisions and regiments by a hundred kilometers.

It was, after all, fixable.

Along the magnificent, completely cleared roads, in cars stuffed with signalmen, property, ammunition and food, in one column, without stopping, we swept through the burning cities and farms, through the burning city of Insterburg to the right and left of us. Swallowing hot air mixed with smoke, with scorched eyelashes, and in the middle of the second day, completely exhausted and starting to lose my bearings, I decided to stop in a surviving German cottage located fifty meters from the highway.

All six vehicles and the radio station of the RSB for communication with the headquarters of the army and the front were at my disposal. Tarasov and Shcherbakov on the company "Willis" lagged behind, and not by chance.

Shcherbakov, with an orderly and with his girlfriend Anya, captured another twenty-year-old telephone operator from the headquarters of the division, Rita, and a ten-liter bottle of vodka, and he and Tarasov stopped in some surviving cottage a day ago. In the evening they drank to the offensive, and at night Shcherbakov slipped the half-drunk Tarasov the luxurious and highly experienced girl Rita, with whom only she had already slept. Chaste, proud and talented, Tarasov could not live without her on the second day, and on the fifth day he found Rita in the attic with the soldier Sitsukov lying on her.

But this is a different story. By a whim of nature, the member of the frail degenerate Sitsukov was up to the knees. None of the signalers, snipers and nurses read Freud, but they all felt something. Curiosity, unbridledness, or something really was surreal, some kind of feeling incomparable to anything in life, but as soon as this long-nosed, lop-eared, with a small chin and pendulous lip gave a sign to any woman within my line of sight, she immediately walked behind him and forever remained the smitten dream of Sitsukov.

My former friend, my current boss, Captain Tarasov, having found Sitsukov on Rita in December 1944, climbs into the attic of the German cottage in which our headquarters is located, and cuts the veins in both his arms. His orderly saved him when he was already on the border of life and death. He bandaged his hands and took him to the hospital. And in the evening, Rita was pulled out of the noose, on which she was already hanging, and barely pumped out.

These are Romeo and Juliet who showed up in our unit. Returning from the hospital, Tarasov called me and ordered to enroll Rita in my platoon. I knew that I deliberately did not get close to my telephone operators.

We had many conversations on this topic.

I explained my position to him a long time ago. Yes, I liked many of them and dreamed at night. I secretly fell in love first with Katya, then with Nadia, then with Anya, who rushed to meet me, snuggled up, kissed me, and even invited me, pretending that this was a joke. But I knew that this was serious, and I knew myself that if I went forward, I would no longer be able to stop, all statutory relations would go to hell. I will wear it in my arms and I will no longer be able to be a self-respecting commander. If she is indulged, then already, in fairness, to everyone, but then how to work and fight?

I must say that the former Tarasov thought and acted the same way as I did. But there was another reason.

I understood how difficult it was for these eighteen-year-old girls to exist at the front in conditions of complete lack of hygiene, in clothes not adapted for combat operations, in stockings that either torn or slipped, in tarpaulin boots that either got wet or rubbed their legs, skirts that made it difficult to run and some were too long, while others were too short, when no one considered the fact that menstruation existed, when none of the soldiers and officers gave passage, and among them were not only boys in love, but also sophisticated sadists.

How stubbornly they defended their womanhood in the first months, and then fell in love first with a soldier, then with a lieutenant, and the senior scoundrel officer began to harass this soldier, and in the end this girl had to lie under this scoundrel, who, at best, threw, and at worst publicly mocked, and it happened, and beat. How then she walked from hand to hand, and could no longer stop, and learned to drink her forced crippled youth with her hundred grams of vodka ...

This is how a person is arranged, that everything bad is first forgotten, and subsequently romanticized, and who will remember that already six months later they left for the rear after pregnancy, some gave birth to children and remained in civilian life, while others, and there were much more of them, had abortions and returned to their units until the next abortion.

There were exceptions. There were exits.

The best thing is to become a PPJ, a general's field wife, worse - a colonel (the general will take it away) ...

In February 1944, the generals of the army headquarters heard a rumor about a signal lieutenant who, in modern terms, does not fuck his women.

And several PJs stubbornly cheated on their lovers, generals with green soldiers. And now, by order of the commander of the army, my platoon is given a new telephone center - six telephone operators who have made a mistake in the field of love, six PZH who have betrayed their generals: the chief of the political department of the army, the chief of staff, the commander of two corps, the chief quartermaster and I still don’t remember which military leaders.

All of them are depraved, spoiled by fate and at first helpless in the conditions of nomadic dugout life.

I appoint them as their head absolutely positive person heroic build, jack of all trades master, senior sergeant Polyansky. I know how much he misses his wife and four daughters. His assistant is an elderly family man Dobritsyn. Together they dig a dugout. They cut down trees. Bunks in two tiers, three reels, an iron barrel - an oven, a table for telephone sets, a rack for machine guns, shell casings, cartridges, grenades. All the villages around are burned, everything has to be done by hand.

The girls are swearing, but Polyansky's multi-stage hoarse obscenity conquers and pacifies them. A week passes, they seem to be fulfilling their mission, but under what conditions? How did the relationship develop? And I'm going and get to know each other, and check their professional suitability, and it's interesting to see, they say that they are beauties.

I ride about twelve kilometers along a fascinated road laid by army sappers through an impenetrable and continuous network of swamps. To the right and to the left is a stunted birch forest, water.

Every hundred meters there is a junction - a small log platform, somewhat reminiscent of a raft. Each log, two and a half meters long, is fastened with steel ropes to the adjacent front and adjacent rear ones, and on the sides there are vertical fixing logs that go deep into solid layers of earth lying under a layer of water and silt. Both the sidings and the road are laid through deep swamps, through a bog. You can’t drive off the road - you stumble and you won’t get out. And in the heated air, mosquitoes, midges, dragonflies. It is quite unpleasant to wait at the crossing until the next oncoming car passes. The horse is frightened, does not stand still.

If you pull on the bridle, it starts to back away, now and then you have to get off. However, the swamp chain ends. On a country road, higher, higher, I take out the compass, I look. According to the map, four hundred meters to the west of the former village.

Indeed, on the hill is a girl with a gun.

I announced my departure by phone, and they are waiting for me.

Polyansky comes out of the dugout, reports, five girls are getting out.

I get off the horse. Irka Mikheeva, who has already been in my platoon twice in two years, rushes to meet me, kisses me and hangs on my neck. This is both a bit of hooliganism and a desire to show our comrades-in-arms that we are friends. She has been indifferent to me for a long time, but I hide my pleasure from this public meeting with her. Even near Yartsevo, a year ago, she called me to the nearest forest:

Let's go, lieutenant! Why the fuck don't you want me?

“I can’t, Irina, and I don’t want to cheat on my bride,” I say, and I myself almost have a fever, and she shakes her head doubtfully:

- You're some kind of freak.

I go down the stairs to the dugout.

The girls dragged from somewhere feather beds, pillows, blankets. I check the machines, everything is lubricated, in order, they also understand telephone sets. Polyansky taught them how to pull the line, and how to eliminate breaks, and how to change batteries or accumulators.

They shot at empty cans. Well done Polyansky - and taught this.

In the evening I tell what is happening at the fronts and in the world, and they do not hesitate - who, how and with whom twisted novels, about whom - with regret and love, about whom with disgust.

Upstairs there are empty bunks, pine logs covered with a layer of spruce branches, I spread my raincoat, I want to climb in, and on the lower bunks below me, Irka, she threw off her tunic and skirt, and takes off her panties and stockings.

“Lieutenant,” he says, “you won’t fall asleep on the logs, come, b ..., to sleep with me!”

I am twenty-one years old, I am not made of iron or stone, and Polyansky adds fuel to the fire:

- What are you going to toil on the logs, go to Irka.

His eyes darkened with excitement. The thought flashes: “In front of everyone?”

And then Anya Gureeva, who studied as a ballerina as a civilian, cheated on the chief of staff of the army with my radio operator Bollot, crept up from behind, hugged her in the ear:

- Do not go to Irka, but to me!

- Girls, e ... your mother, stop, b ..., fool around! - And I break out of hot hands, pull myself up on my hands, and onto my cape, onto branches, onto my overcoat. And the heart beats, and in my thoughts a complete mess. And that I’m like a eunuch, let it all go to hell, I’ll count to twenty - if Irka calls again, then even if the whole world turns upside down - I’ll lie down and unite my life with her.

But the world is not upside down. I counted to twenty, and she was already sleeping, she got tired on duty and fell asleep instantly.

Until the morning I suffer on logs. What before my temptations of Saint Anthony?

At six in the morning it is already light. I'm leaving the dugout. Polyansky wakes up and helps me saddle the horse. Melancholy devours me, I drive along the fascinated road, after three hours I leave for the Minsk highway and fall under mortar shelling, but this shelling is not aimed, the mines fall forty meters from me, a couple of fragments rush past. Opposite Kornilov's post, there, in the dugout, there were only peasants and not a single coward. The Germans are eight hundred meters away. They have been working in this dugout for the third month.

Here both mines and shells burst, communication breaks every now and then, and you have to go to the line, but as long as everyone is alive, God has mercy. They greet me joyfully, but, as if knocked down, I fall on the bunk and fall asleep.

Sixty-five years have passed.

I am infinitely sorry that I did not sleep with either Irina, or Anna, or Nadia, or Polina, or Vera Peterson, or Masha Zakharova.

Polina was bandaging my legs when, in December 1942, I arrived from the school with deep, suppurating dystrophic ulcers, I was in pain, but I smiled, and she bandaged and smiled, and I kissed her, and she locked the dugout door on a hook, and I was like paralyzed. And so we sat, clinging to each other, on her greatcoat for three hours.

I was walking with Masha Zakharova on some urgent matter, and we did not notice how the day was over, and went into the house of the gunners, asked permission to spend the night, settled down on the floor, I laid out my overcoat, and covered ourselves with Machine's overcoat. The sweet, yearning girl Masha suddenly clung to me and began to kiss me. The duty sergeant was sitting at the table by the telephone, and I felt ashamed to surrender to the feeling that was devouring me in front of the sergeant.

What was it?

“A few days ago we entered Lithuania. In Poland, the population speaks Russian quite tolerably. Everything is blacker in Lithuania. And the floors are unwashed, and flies in droves, and packs of fleas. However, it seems to me that in a few days all this will be far behind ... True, now you have to sleep very little ... A new anniversary is approaching. Where will it have to be done? Allenstein ahead. Next door to me is a slightly early arrived unit. She was ordered to settle in Koenigsberg. Happy travels to her!

Today I received a salary in Polish money at the rate of one ruble - one zloty ... "

“Dear Lenechka! The fourth anniversary is coming, and the war is dragging on. We both dream of celebrating the New, forty-fifth year with you, but we will have to wait patiently. My dear! Be vigilant and circumspect.

The presumptuous beast is rabid, does not stop its villainy, and we will continue to hope that soon all disasters will end, that we will definitely meet. While we continue to write letters.

This is the only pleasure. We have nothing new, letters other than yours are also not received. You write that you have dirt, but we have a strong winter since November. In December it was 23 degrees of frost, but the weather is good, there is a lot of sun.

In our apartment it is much better than in previous winters - 10-12 degrees Celsius, and this is already tolerable, and if you close the kitchen, it is quite warm. On December 31, I will drink to your health (I can’t drink, but I will drink to your health). Hugs and kisses tightly, your mother.