About the front -line soldiers

By the way, the front -line soldiers whom I knew did not like to talk about the war. And this despite the fact that they all considered her the main event of their fate. All of them appreciated human life, and at the front they had to kill. If they had not killed, they would have killed them. The war sensitive to people has inflicted a lifelong injury.

My first wife’s father, Alexander Ustinovich Trojanker, freed Prague from the Germans on the tank, then worked at the Department of Communications, and headed the laboratory there. I am not a great connoisseur of male beauty, but on A.U. I wanted to watch me. And what can I say about women - they looked at him, even when he was overlapped in seventy. He was always in the process of providing assistance - his little town, half -crazy sisters, colleagues, and people are completely third -party. There were three Alexander in the family, but only A.U. corresponded to the semantics of this glorious name - the defender of people.

The older brother A.U., Benedict, the corps commissar with three rhombuses, was shot in the thirty -eighth year, but A.U. He was distinguished by beautifulness, remained a convinced communist and therefore boldly entered high offices. He considered himself a Soviet man, the authorities were also Soviet, and he did not see any reasons to shun it. Even the cynical authorities disarmed his sincerity - the people he asked for, received apartments, trips, and material assistance. A.U. He possessed an optimistic and frivolous look at the surroundings and, only when the lean cabbage soup was handed over at home at dinner, grumbled: “Again ...” by growing, he was accepted with enthusiastically slurp.

A.U. He was a purely civilian person. Nevertheless, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Here is what is written in a reward sheet (punctuation is preserved): “Personally, Comrade. Trojanker showing courage and courage burst first into the settlement, suppressed 4 fesniks of 3 cars to 15 people with his tank. The infantry pr-ka, thereby ensured the promotion of our units ahead. ”

During the life of the foreman, I did not see this award sheet; For which he received his order - did not know. From military experience, he reproduced only one story - but not about the war, but about how he went there. The train barely dragged, stood for a long time, there was nothing to eat. And suddenly, they gave out black caviar as a solder - from a belly, but without bread. Natives of desert Central Asia never saw caviar, they filled it to the brim with a pot and began to cook at the stake. That's mind! Judging by the stories of A.U., no war happened further - then we went straight into Prague, where grateful Czechs met him with flowers.

During his story, Alexander Ustinovich was scratched all the time. When he recalled the war, he was invariably played by a fit of psoriasis.

***

The father of my school friend Misha, Mikhail Sergeyevich Bobylev, was a front-line soldier with the Order of the Red Star, an artilleryman with a frostbittened feet in Stalingrad, because of which he had to wear spacious supports on a thick quilted sole. The shirt on it was invariably officer, protective from the Nazis color. Mikhail Sergeyevich was proud of his antennae, for his mustache was put to him, he wore them by right - after all, he served in the Guards Division. Mikhail Sergeyevich was low, possessed a fried and sinewy body - he was taken from the back for a teenager. The food was postponed not in his stomach, but went to the resumption of workers' veins. M.S. He certified himself as follows: "A little dog is a puppy to old age." He himself had two cats with whom he loved to love.

Mikhail Sergeyevich was an enthusiastic smoker - always with a cigarette, a cigarette, a pipe, or even a cigar. Since Soviet tobacco products were usually damp, he bought several packs at once, opened them and put them to dry on the battery. M.S. He collected tobacco, and when we became older, he treated us with outlandish stamps, which were not produced a long time ago. From the past tense, the smell disappeared, all the varieties were the taste of burnt paper. But Mikhail Sergeyevich remembered what this taste was once, and from his colorful description, you also began to feel the difference in aromas.

Mikhail Sergeyevich loved to repair something; He was an engineer and inventor, had patents and diplomas, but he was distinguished by an independent person - he did not get along with his superiors, did not reach his posts. He read everything that could be read about the war - both documentary and artistic, but he believed that he had not yet been written about his war. He himself talked about the war only of bikes. Once, it was about the "life of Klim Samghin"; I admitted that I did not master the epic. He replied that this novel could not help but be in mind: somehow a couple of calm weeks were in the war, when his platoon stood in an abandoned village house, where he discovered the only book-namely Samgin. “There was nothing to do, so I read it. I was a boy, commanded a platoon, my soldiers were stronger than me, some sat in prison. They stood behind me; I read the page, pulled it out and gave it to self -circle. ” I think that every writer can only dream that his work is so successful.

Or here's more about Stalingrad. The regiment of Mikhail Sergeyevich left after the battle, but he did not have time - he remained with frostbitten legs in the village, littered with corpses of the Germans. What to do when you are twenty -five years old, the cold is exchanged to the bones and I want to live? You still need to do something. Together with the same poor fellow, they decided to blow up a German gun. The steamed corpses of the Germans were leaned against the houses - so that they would get from the explosion so that it would become more fun. One was especially remembered - with an umbrella in the tightly clasped fingers. The cord - and then the "Willis" with the Soviet authorities focused. The accomplice ran away, but his legs did not allow Mikhail Sergeyevich. And he put a German overcoat on top of the Red Army uniform - for heat. People ready for reprisal jumped out of the car, but M.S. I managed to report the situation, and the cord itself went out by itself - it would not be all the head of the head. That's mind!

On holidays M.S. He loved to treat the Mishin friends with honest vodka, but he started to bite from red caviar, and not with a rusty herring. “This is a military legacy, you never know when they kill, we always began to dine with what is more tasty.”

When we went after the treats to ventilate and already descended the stairs, Mikhail Sergeyevich always stood at the open door and looked sadly after us, knowing that we were leaving him further and further.

***

In the "Combat Filzer" No. 5 (1941), a pilot is shown, gently resting near his fighter after completing a combat mission. He lies on the grass and reads the "sentimental journey" of Stern. That year, Britain and the USSR were called in domestic documentary cinema "two great democratic powers."

The pilot enjoyed the unthinkable foreign trip and the sophisticated feelings of the mossy Englishman, and at the same time my grandmother Anya burned family documents in the Arbat courtyard - did not want the Germans to go. And even at the same time, a certain Moscow dentist refused to treat the tooth to the girl Ray. The dentist told her that she would be killed anyway and nothing to bother with treatment. Therefore, he simply pulled out this tooth with the root. The girl Paradise cried with resentment and pain, but survived and a dozen years later she married my mother’s uncle named Vitya. An artificial tooth of stainless steel was already inserted by another doctor. Grandma Anya restored the documents and died many years later.

The German was driven by the same pilot, who, at the insistence of the director, had to pretend that he was smarter than himself. But this did not prevent him from driving the Germans to the hell.

Alexander Meshcheryakov