Minesweeper at war in a special price
The enemy’s minefields were an equation with many unknowns.
The Order of Alexander Nevsky was considered the youngest sign in the series of Soviet military awards. Although many falerists call it the most beautiful award of the USSR. According to the statute, it was handed over to officers who "showed personal courage, courage and bravery and skillful command to ensure successful actions of their units in the battles for the Motherland during World War II." Gennady Mikhailovich DULNEV, a resident of the village of Pirogovskiy near Moscow, became a knight of the Order of Alexander Nevsky in the victorious forty-fifth, after the capture of Koenigsberg.
About the fortress with underground bunkers, a system of secret passages, supplies of food and water for a three-year siege, Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky said: “Koenigsberg is a tough nut. It will be hard to gnaw. ”
All approaches to the city were blocked by anti-tank ditches up to six meters deep, ridges, wire barriers, fields with thousands of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, all kinds of barbed-wire obstacles and Bruno's spirals. The capital of East Prussia itself represented a single powerful fortified area: almost every house in the city was turned into a knot of resistance, into a strong point.
We must pay tribute to the German military engineers, who carefully thought out and skillfully built a perfect and very original defense system. The Hitler press in every possible way painted its impregnability. Goebbels assured that "the Bolsheviks would break their teeth about the granite of the fortress," the garrison of which totaled more than half a million soldiers and officers with 8200 guns and mortars, 700 tanks and assault guns. “Yes, it was a real stronghold, but can something stop our soldier!” - noted Gennady Mikhailovich.
DOG KENIGSBERG
Noteworthy fact: Koenigsberg is the only city that was not the capital of the state, in honor of which it was established during the Great Patriotic War in the USSR to establish a medal.
The enemy fought with an unprecedented frenzy and therefore the leaflets and appeals of our command called: “To seize Koenigsberg is a matter of our honor, glory, valor!”, “In the name of complete victory over the enemy, Motherland orders us to cut the last fortified knot of East Prussia!”.
Of particular danger were long-term firing points built several years before the start of World War II. “During the war years, it was possible to see different dots, but such powerful ones were not necessary,” Dulnev recalls. - It was an underground concrete casemates in three floors. Later we saw that they were interconnected by tunnels, had underground storage facilities, sanitary facilities and autonomous water supply. Above - overlappings of armor 20 thick centimeters. They tried to suppress the artillery - nothing happened, only the shells izvili in vain. On top of the fortifications on the ground has already grown shrubs and trees. With crossfire of large-caliber machine guns, pillboxes were shooting through each other’s approaches. Around each dota is a minefield. ”
At that time, the guard captain Dulnev was deputy commander of the 34-th separate demining battalion of the 32-th Guards Red Banner Order of Suvorov of the Taman Infantry Division.
The battalion was assigned the task of ensuring that the advancing troops breach 350-400 meters in the first line of defense of the enemy. Dots were apart from each other at a distance of 50-70 meters. “Within two days, nine assault groups were formed. Each included experienced sappers, infantrymen, traders of explosives, etc. For example, in order to destroy the pillbox, it was necessary to lay several boxes of explosives. In each - 25 kilograms tola. And imagine how well the dungeon was equipped, if after such an explosion the armored cap barely budged, ”says Gennady Mikhailovich.
As the front-line soldier noted, intelligence revealed 13 pillboxes, studied and examined approaches to them. There was a very important task on Dulnev - the organization of the breakthrough of the assault groups at the appointed time and, if possible, of the simultaneous decommissioning of all 13 dots. The captain was also required to maintain contact with the gunners, who were to hit the embrasures of the firing points with direct fire. Covered the sappers guns, "sorokapyatki."
The explosions were scheduled to take place in 3.00. By this time, the assault groups were supposed to overcome the minefields and wire barriers through specially made passes, bypassing the pillboxes from the rear and setting explosives in vulnerable areas. The front-line commander noted that the whole of February was a weather with frequent snowfalls, rain and drizzle, and continuous fogs, which was in the hands of our fighters.
“Overcome, get around, install ...” But it looks smooth only on paper. It was necessary to pass to each dota, or rather, using shallow deeps, crawling hundreds of meters. In belligerent, clinging to the ground so that between it and the body is left and the slightest crack. However, the distance was also important because every meter could be the last. And when enemy lighting flares hovered in the night sky, they literally had to press into the cold, wet earth and merge with it immovably. The movement continued only after the missiles were extinguished. And so on until the next flash ...
In due time, it was possible to undermine all 13 pillboxes. To the question “But the Germans were sitting in the dungeon, why did they not resist?” - the front-line soldier replied: “They were so stunned after the explosion that they could not even move.” And he added that they did not save the soldiers of the enemy and the words “God is with us!” Stamped on the buckles of the belts, which apparently should have kept them from bullets and shells.
Gennady Dulnev, who was part of one of the assault groups, rose to the surface after a survey of the underground casemate: he had to choose a position to adjust artillery fire. It had already broken, the fog cleared and the officer apparently became a good target for the enemy sniper. With a shot, he literally turned his leg: “I did not feel pain, but I turned my boot to the other side.” The fighters cut the shoes, put a wooden tire and, laying one of the beds on the net, dragged them to their front line.
So, on the night of February 7 of the victorious year, the war ended for the guard. The Order of Alexander Nevsky found him already in the hospital. It was handed over to his battalion commander, who said that the sniper was firing from the bomb, which the scouts failed to identify.
THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS WENT TO THE FRONT
When the Great Patriotic War began, Gennady was 18 and he studied in the first year of the Moscow Military Engineering School. Hastily mastered the mine-explosive cause of the future officers thrown under Rzhev to undermine industrial facilities, mining bridges, and building anti-tank ditches. Explosives dragged on themselves. The Germans were moving east so rapidly that the cadets quickly understood the meaning of the saying “Procrastination is like death.” Sometimes they managed to get ahead of the enemy for a few minutes. Retreated to the capital. “This has become our exam, which we have successfully passed,” the front-line soldier sadly joked.
Later, as a lieutenant, Dulnev received a sapper platoon, then commanded a company. Participated in hostilities to liberate the Caucasus, Taman, Kerch Peninsula, and in other operations. He says that it was especially hard at the breakthrough of the Blue Line - the fortified line of the fascists twenty kilometers wide from Novorossiysk to Temryuk. And all this time, Gennady Mikhailovich, along with his subordinates, performed risky work: installed anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, removed enemy ones, making passes in the enemy’s minefields for his infantry and equipment. With the departure, the sappers were the last to block the advance of the enemy. In defense, others, but not sappers, could get a breather. The scouts are coming on a mission beyond the front line — they need to prepare a “walkway” ...
Worked mostly at night. How many were there, such nights at the limit of human capabilities, did not count. From fatigue, stress through deactivated mines did not lead. Only once in a conversation he mentioned that, under Taman, "probably a million mines were taken off." A million, perhaps not, but thousands of counts.
Awards show how the sapper fought: for the battles in the Caucasus - the Order of the Red Star, for the liberation of Taman - World War 1 degree, for ensuring the landing of troops on the Kerch Peninsula - the Red Banner, for the battles for the liberation of Sevastopol and the storming of the Sapun Mountains - World War 2 degree.
When they took Sevastopol, in the front-line newspaper “Forward, for the Motherland!” A portrait drawing of an officer appeared with the signature “Hero of the battles for the Crimea, three times the guard’s order guard Captain G. Dulnev”.
Gennady Mikhailovich himself says that it was ordinary work. Yes, this is exactly how the affairs of the front-line sappers Ilya Ehrenburg described in his time. Here is an excerpt from his correspondence, “Laborers of the War,” dated November 1943: “There are soldiers whose exploits speak little of. Their courage is devoid of brilliance. Their courage is protective in color. Sappers are working soldiers. These are the war laborers.
Minesweeper crawling among the weeds, among the reeds, on clay, along the sand. He is alone with death. The enemy is invisible. The enemy is in the thinnest wire, in an inconspicuous peg. Minesweeper crawling under fire. Around - breaks. He has no right to listen. He must look vigilantly, intensely. As a miner searches for bits of gold, a sapper searches for mines. He must be not only courageous, but prudent and resourceful. One careless movement, a couple of seconds of distraction - and more he will not see either this weed, Transnistrian sand, or a light autumn sky. "Minesweeper makes a mistake once in a lifetime" - this became a soldier's saying. "
By the way, this saying meant not only the death from an enemy mine. Sometimes, as the front-line soldiers told me, the sappers were obliged to conduct the first echelons of the attacking troops personally through the minefields along the passages they had made. So there was such a laborer of the war in front of the tank, followed by a special person with a pistol in his hand, in order to shoot a sapper on the spot, if an armored vehicle suddenly explodes ... So the saying “Minesweeper makes a mistake once in a lifetime” for our soldiers had a double meaning: either you would be blown up, or you would get a bullet from the “beholder”. End one.
According to Dulnev, the Germans constantly prepared some “surprises”, in which they were great masters. Applied the enemy and "jumping" mines, and "stretching". Only slightly touched, it happened, our sapper enemy wire barrage without a preliminary inspection and then either an explosion of a skillfully disguised mine or an illumination rocket takes off. And then a brutal fire is opened on the sappers.
Jumping mines were often installed on the roads in a staggered manner. These gizmos exploded at a height of one and a half to two meters. Shards scattered up to three meters around. “It is very difficult to clear such mines, great care and courage are needed. If you make a mistake, you will not check the bottom and jerk a mine, putting it aside, the fuse immediately works ... ”So, the lives of people were often behind the clues of“ surprises ”.
As the veteran noted, if it was possible to sort out his “farm” - the fields with the exact number of mines installed on them were fixed on the respective cards and the risk was the ability to remove the fuse, then the enemy’s minefields were an equation with many unknowns. It is not known in what order the mines are set, what sample they are, in what quantity and with what tricks: “A different field was stuck with mines, like cucumbers!”.
People were out of action almost every day: “Alas, there were mistakes. And even if the fighter remained alive, then without arms and legs. You know, it was easier for me to work alone so that no one was close. I was sure of myself, but God forbid, someone else is blundering. ” And oversights were largely due to the fact that engineering units were often staffed from "non-soldiers" who were not fit for service in infantry, tank or artillery-mortar units, as well as fighters who had physical disabilities after injuries and hospitals. They had to train, as they say, in action. "They would have been trained for about three months at the test site, but who would allow it?"
And what is to remove even one mine? After all, it does not stick, does not flaunt like an Amanita mushroom, but lies quietly in the ground, sprinkled, hidden, and waits for the sapper to make a mistake in order to once again confirm the well-known saying. And he carefully crawls from mine to mine and, gradually losing their count, feels every inch of wet or snowy ground with fingers that have grown sick from the cold. With the mine detector in sight of the enemy will not pass. True, it was of little use to him - the devices reacted to metal objects, and this stuff was all around enough.
“They worked with probes - this is something like a cleaning rod,” recalls Gennady Mikhailovich. - Case, consider jewelery. Crawling slowly, carefully, breathing a little, you pierce every inch of earth in front of you. I took a little to the side - I missed a mine. From tension, even in winter, the tunic was wet with sweat. The rocket soared into the sky - you wait, you freeze to a shiver from the cold. But surprisingly, they rarely got sick. ”
Dulnev speaks with special feeling about dogs, whose keen nose saved many lives of fighters and commanders: “They worked flawlessly.”
The war left a lot of notches in the memory of the veteran. Heavy fighting, loss of comrades, happy days of liberation from fascists of Soviet cities and villages, bright Victory Day and much more, which he never forgot about in the post-war years. One of the memories of the veteran is associated with a heavy fight, which occurred in February 1943, in the village of Enem, in the Kuban region: “Then my whole company was killed. Several people survived by a miracle. ”
That morning, Dulnev and his subordinates returned from the front line, where he conducted mining. The sappers did not have time to rest after hard work, as the KP regiment attacked the enemy battalion. Dulnev then miraculously survived. In that battle, he lost his military friend, Guard Lieutenant Demichev.
He asked about the People's Commissar hundred grams for the sappers: “At lunchtime, or when they returned from the mission, they would drink. But if I had to work, I did not allow him to take a drop in my mouth. Once I changed this rule and I kind of drank a little, but I almost died. Then he swore. He said that in this and in many other respects he was a tough commander: “If an officer does not have the will, character, and demands of himself and his subordinates, there will be no sense”. It was the same with smoking: before the task smoke as much as you want, but at night the light of a roll-up could become a target for the enemy sniper. Dulnev himself quit smoking after being injured - the doctor forbade.
NEW LIFE AND AGAIN IN THE RUNS
After a long treatment, Gennady Mikhailovich was discharged from the hospital with an invalid of the second group. But he refused the disability when the question arose about the service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After long trips to the doctors, he was allowed to get settled by the investigator: they say, the paper work, her health on the front will not interfere.
Only here Dulnev was not waiting for a sit-down life: after graduating from the law institute, he served for many years in the Main Investigation Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Doros before the investigator for particularly important cases. He specialized in criminal cases involving large-scale embezzlement, so that business trips alternated continuously.
Many times the road-path led to the Magadan region. The region, where a third of domestic gold is mined, has long attracted thrill-seekers and not with good intentions. Gennady Mikhailovich called the names of the “authorities” and the number of stolen, but hardly anyone today says something, for example, the name of Skripkin. And although the case was loud, but too many years have passed, now the other criminal "authorities" on hearing. The veteran noted that at that time investigators and detectives had been biting into matters so that rarely one of the criminals escaped responsibility.
Of course, large-scale thefts occurred not only in Kolyma. One of the memorable cases for him is the theft of spare parts and parts at a television factory in Voronezh. Blue screens were then a scarce commodity, on which both the company's employees and their associates in the shops — directors and freight forwarders — warmed their hands. The amounts of embezzlement for those years were astronomical, so I had to make arrests in Voronezh and Kursk, Cheboksary and Belgorod ...
Business trips lasted for a month or three: “I often visited Central Asia and Transcaucasia. He loved working with local operatives in Belarus - a knowledgeable, sympathetic people. But in the Baltics did not like to go. " The explanation of this at the frontline is simple: in any office or at a meeting in Armenia or Azerbaijan, the conversation was in Russian. But not in the Baltic republics.
The veteran talked about a lot, including the painful one: “You know, we didn’t spare ourselves, we didn’t reckon with time. They thought about work, they lived with it, they went to work with pleasure. If it is a serious matter, then they spent the night in the office. Yes, they could drink a glass of vodka after work, but to take bribes or toss drugs, like today, this was not the case. My head does not fit. After all, we fought with criminals to be honest. They considered themselves to be professionals, we ourselves too, and if we replayed them, then the serious criminals blamed themselves: that the detectives or investigators turned out to be stronger. ”
Gennady Mikhailovich long retired. Listed in the Book of Honor of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Together with his wife, Claudia Vasilievna, who, unfortunately, recently passed away, raised two sons. There are granddaughters and grandson, great-granddaughter grows. Such a decent and hectic life behind a front-line soldier.
The Order of Alexander Nevsky was considered the youngest sign in the series of Soviet military awards. Although many falerists call it the most beautiful award of the USSR. According to the statute, it was handed over to officers who "showed personal courage, courage and bravery and skillful command to ensure successful actions of their units in the battles for the Motherland during World War II." Gennady Mikhailovich DULNEV, a resident of the village of Pirogovskiy near Moscow, became a knight of the Order of Alexander Nevsky in the victorious forty-fifth, after the capture of Koenigsberg.About the fortress with underground bunkers, a system of secret passages, supplies of food and water for a three-year siege, Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky said: “Koenigsberg is a tough nut. It will be hard to gnaw. ”
All approaches to the city were blocked by anti-tank ditches up to six meters deep, ridges, wire barriers, fields with thousands of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, all kinds of barbed-wire obstacles and Bruno's spirals. The capital of East Prussia itself represented a single powerful fortified area: almost every house in the city was turned into a knot of resistance, into a strong point.
We must pay tribute to the German military engineers, who carefully thought out and skillfully built a perfect and very original defense system. The Hitler press in every possible way painted its impregnability. Goebbels assured that "the Bolsheviks would break their teeth about the granite of the fortress," the garrison of which totaled more than half a million soldiers and officers with 8200 guns and mortars, 700 tanks and assault guns. “Yes, it was a real stronghold, but can something stop our soldier!” - noted Gennady Mikhailovich.
DOG KENIGSBERGNoteworthy fact: Koenigsberg is the only city that was not the capital of the state, in honor of which it was established during the Great Patriotic War in the USSR to establish a medal.
The enemy fought with an unprecedented frenzy and therefore the leaflets and appeals of our command called: “To seize Koenigsberg is a matter of our honor, glory, valor!”, “In the name of complete victory over the enemy, Motherland orders us to cut the last fortified knot of East Prussia!”.
Of particular danger were long-term firing points built several years before the start of World War II. “During the war years, it was possible to see different dots, but such powerful ones were not necessary,” Dulnev recalls. - It was an underground concrete casemates in three floors. Later we saw that they were interconnected by tunnels, had underground storage facilities, sanitary facilities and autonomous water supply. Above - overlappings of armor 20 thick centimeters. They tried to suppress the artillery - nothing happened, only the shells izvili in vain. On top of the fortifications on the ground has already grown shrubs and trees. With crossfire of large-caliber machine guns, pillboxes were shooting through each other’s approaches. Around each dota is a minefield. ”
At that time, the guard captain Dulnev was deputy commander of the 34-th separate demining battalion of the 32-th Guards Red Banner Order of Suvorov of the Taman Infantry Division.
The battalion was assigned the task of ensuring that the advancing troops breach 350-400 meters in the first line of defense of the enemy. Dots were apart from each other at a distance of 50-70 meters. “Within two days, nine assault groups were formed. Each included experienced sappers, infantrymen, traders of explosives, etc. For example, in order to destroy the pillbox, it was necessary to lay several boxes of explosives. In each - 25 kilograms tola. And imagine how well the dungeon was equipped, if after such an explosion the armored cap barely budged, ”says Gennady Mikhailovich.
As the front-line soldier noted, intelligence revealed 13 pillboxes, studied and examined approaches to them. There was a very important task on Dulnev - the organization of the breakthrough of the assault groups at the appointed time and, if possible, of the simultaneous decommissioning of all 13 dots. The captain was also required to maintain contact with the gunners, who were to hit the embrasures of the firing points with direct fire. Covered the sappers guns, "sorokapyatki."
The explosions were scheduled to take place in 3.00. By this time, the assault groups were supposed to overcome the minefields and wire barriers through specially made passes, bypassing the pillboxes from the rear and setting explosives in vulnerable areas. The front-line commander noted that the whole of February was a weather with frequent snowfalls, rain and drizzle, and continuous fogs, which was in the hands of our fighters.
“Overcome, get around, install ...” But it looks smooth only on paper. It was necessary to pass to each dota, or rather, using shallow deeps, crawling hundreds of meters. In belligerent, clinging to the ground so that between it and the body is left and the slightest crack. However, the distance was also important because every meter could be the last. And when enemy lighting flares hovered in the night sky, they literally had to press into the cold, wet earth and merge with it immovably. The movement continued only after the missiles were extinguished. And so on until the next flash ...
In due time, it was possible to undermine all 13 pillboxes. To the question “But the Germans were sitting in the dungeon, why did they not resist?” - the front-line soldier replied: “They were so stunned after the explosion that they could not even move.” And he added that they did not save the soldiers of the enemy and the words “God is with us!” Stamped on the buckles of the belts, which apparently should have kept them from bullets and shells.
Gennady Dulnev, who was part of one of the assault groups, rose to the surface after a survey of the underground casemate: he had to choose a position to adjust artillery fire. It had already broken, the fog cleared and the officer apparently became a good target for the enemy sniper. With a shot, he literally turned his leg: “I did not feel pain, but I turned my boot to the other side.” The fighters cut the shoes, put a wooden tire and, laying one of the beds on the net, dragged them to their front line.
So, on the night of February 7 of the victorious year, the war ended for the guard. The Order of Alexander Nevsky found him already in the hospital. It was handed over to his battalion commander, who said that the sniper was firing from the bomb, which the scouts failed to identify.
THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS WENT TO THE FRONTWhen the Great Patriotic War began, Gennady was 18 and he studied in the first year of the Moscow Military Engineering School. Hastily mastered the mine-explosive cause of the future officers thrown under Rzhev to undermine industrial facilities, mining bridges, and building anti-tank ditches. Explosives dragged on themselves. The Germans were moving east so rapidly that the cadets quickly understood the meaning of the saying “Procrastination is like death.” Sometimes they managed to get ahead of the enemy for a few minutes. Retreated to the capital. “This has become our exam, which we have successfully passed,” the front-line soldier sadly joked.
Later, as a lieutenant, Dulnev received a sapper platoon, then commanded a company. Participated in hostilities to liberate the Caucasus, Taman, Kerch Peninsula, and in other operations. He says that it was especially hard at the breakthrough of the Blue Line - the fortified line of the fascists twenty kilometers wide from Novorossiysk to Temryuk. And all this time, Gennady Mikhailovich, along with his subordinates, performed risky work: installed anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, removed enemy ones, making passes in the enemy’s minefields for his infantry and equipment. With the departure, the sappers were the last to block the advance of the enemy. In defense, others, but not sappers, could get a breather. The scouts are coming on a mission beyond the front line — they need to prepare a “walkway” ...
Worked mostly at night. How many were there, such nights at the limit of human capabilities, did not count. From fatigue, stress through deactivated mines did not lead. Only once in a conversation he mentioned that, under Taman, "probably a million mines were taken off." A million, perhaps not, but thousands of counts.
Awards show how the sapper fought: for the battles in the Caucasus - the Order of the Red Star, for the liberation of Taman - World War 1 degree, for ensuring the landing of troops on the Kerch Peninsula - the Red Banner, for the battles for the liberation of Sevastopol and the storming of the Sapun Mountains - World War 2 degree.
When they took Sevastopol, in the front-line newspaper “Forward, for the Motherland!” A portrait drawing of an officer appeared with the signature “Hero of the battles for the Crimea, three times the guard’s order guard Captain G. Dulnev”.
Gennady Mikhailovich himself says that it was ordinary work. Yes, this is exactly how the affairs of the front-line sappers Ilya Ehrenburg described in his time. Here is an excerpt from his correspondence, “Laborers of the War,” dated November 1943: “There are soldiers whose exploits speak little of. Their courage is devoid of brilliance. Their courage is protective in color. Sappers are working soldiers. These are the war laborers.
Minesweeper crawling among the weeds, among the reeds, on clay, along the sand. He is alone with death. The enemy is invisible. The enemy is in the thinnest wire, in an inconspicuous peg. Minesweeper crawling under fire. Around - breaks. He has no right to listen. He must look vigilantly, intensely. As a miner searches for bits of gold, a sapper searches for mines. He must be not only courageous, but prudent and resourceful. One careless movement, a couple of seconds of distraction - and more he will not see either this weed, Transnistrian sand, or a light autumn sky. "Minesweeper makes a mistake once in a lifetime" - this became a soldier's saying. "
By the way, this saying meant not only the death from an enemy mine. Sometimes, as the front-line soldiers told me, the sappers were obliged to conduct the first echelons of the attacking troops personally through the minefields along the passages they had made. So there was such a laborer of the war in front of the tank, followed by a special person with a pistol in his hand, in order to shoot a sapper on the spot, if an armored vehicle suddenly explodes ... So the saying “Minesweeper makes a mistake once in a lifetime” for our soldiers had a double meaning: either you would be blown up, or you would get a bullet from the “beholder”. End one.
According to Dulnev, the Germans constantly prepared some “surprises”, in which they were great masters. Applied the enemy and "jumping" mines, and "stretching". Only slightly touched, it happened, our sapper enemy wire barrage without a preliminary inspection and then either an explosion of a skillfully disguised mine or an illumination rocket takes off. And then a brutal fire is opened on the sappers.
Jumping mines were often installed on the roads in a staggered manner. These gizmos exploded at a height of one and a half to two meters. Shards scattered up to three meters around. “It is very difficult to clear such mines, great care and courage are needed. If you make a mistake, you will not check the bottom and jerk a mine, putting it aside, the fuse immediately works ... ”So, the lives of people were often behind the clues of“ surprises ”.
As the veteran noted, if it was possible to sort out his “farm” - the fields with the exact number of mines installed on them were fixed on the respective cards and the risk was the ability to remove the fuse, then the enemy’s minefields were an equation with many unknowns. It is not known in what order the mines are set, what sample they are, in what quantity and with what tricks: “A different field was stuck with mines, like cucumbers!”.
People were out of action almost every day: “Alas, there were mistakes. And even if the fighter remained alive, then without arms and legs. You know, it was easier for me to work alone so that no one was close. I was sure of myself, but God forbid, someone else is blundering. ” And oversights were largely due to the fact that engineering units were often staffed from "non-soldiers" who were not fit for service in infantry, tank or artillery-mortar units, as well as fighters who had physical disabilities after injuries and hospitals. They had to train, as they say, in action. "They would have been trained for about three months at the test site, but who would allow it?"
And what is to remove even one mine? After all, it does not stick, does not flaunt like an Amanita mushroom, but lies quietly in the ground, sprinkled, hidden, and waits for the sapper to make a mistake in order to once again confirm the well-known saying. And he carefully crawls from mine to mine and, gradually losing their count, feels every inch of wet or snowy ground with fingers that have grown sick from the cold. With the mine detector in sight of the enemy will not pass. True, it was of little use to him - the devices reacted to metal objects, and this stuff was all around enough.
“They worked with probes - this is something like a cleaning rod,” recalls Gennady Mikhailovich. - Case, consider jewelery. Crawling slowly, carefully, breathing a little, you pierce every inch of earth in front of you. I took a little to the side - I missed a mine. From tension, even in winter, the tunic was wet with sweat. The rocket soared into the sky - you wait, you freeze to a shiver from the cold. But surprisingly, they rarely got sick. ”
Dulnev speaks with special feeling about dogs, whose keen nose saved many lives of fighters and commanders: “They worked flawlessly.”
The war left a lot of notches in the memory of the veteran. Heavy fighting, loss of comrades, happy days of liberation from fascists of Soviet cities and villages, bright Victory Day and much more, which he never forgot about in the post-war years. One of the memories of the veteran is associated with a heavy fight, which occurred in February 1943, in the village of Enem, in the Kuban region: “Then my whole company was killed. Several people survived by a miracle. ”
That morning, Dulnev and his subordinates returned from the front line, where he conducted mining. The sappers did not have time to rest after hard work, as the KP regiment attacked the enemy battalion. Dulnev then miraculously survived. In that battle, he lost his military friend, Guard Lieutenant Demichev.
He asked about the People's Commissar hundred grams for the sappers: “At lunchtime, or when they returned from the mission, they would drink. But if I had to work, I did not allow him to take a drop in my mouth. Once I changed this rule and I kind of drank a little, but I almost died. Then he swore. He said that in this and in many other respects he was a tough commander: “If an officer does not have the will, character, and demands of himself and his subordinates, there will be no sense”. It was the same with smoking: before the task smoke as much as you want, but at night the light of a roll-up could become a target for the enemy sniper. Dulnev himself quit smoking after being injured - the doctor forbade.
NEW LIFE AND AGAIN IN THE RUNS
After a long treatment, Gennady Mikhailovich was discharged from the hospital with an invalid of the second group. But he refused the disability when the question arose about the service in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After long trips to the doctors, he was allowed to get settled by the investigator: they say, the paper work, her health on the front will not interfere.
Only here Dulnev was not waiting for a sit-down life: after graduating from the law institute, he served for many years in the Main Investigation Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Doros before the investigator for particularly important cases. He specialized in criminal cases involving large-scale embezzlement, so that business trips alternated continuously.
Many times the road-path led to the Magadan region. The region, where a third of domestic gold is mined, has long attracted thrill-seekers and not with good intentions. Gennady Mikhailovich called the names of the “authorities” and the number of stolen, but hardly anyone today says something, for example, the name of Skripkin. And although the case was loud, but too many years have passed, now the other criminal "authorities" on hearing. The veteran noted that at that time investigators and detectives had been biting into matters so that rarely one of the criminals escaped responsibility.
Of course, large-scale thefts occurred not only in Kolyma. One of the memorable cases for him is the theft of spare parts and parts at a television factory in Voronezh. Blue screens were then a scarce commodity, on which both the company's employees and their associates in the shops — directors and freight forwarders — warmed their hands. The amounts of embezzlement for those years were astronomical, so I had to make arrests in Voronezh and Kursk, Cheboksary and Belgorod ...
Business trips lasted for a month or three: “I often visited Central Asia and Transcaucasia. He loved working with local operatives in Belarus - a knowledgeable, sympathetic people. But in the Baltics did not like to go. " The explanation of this at the frontline is simple: in any office or at a meeting in Armenia or Azerbaijan, the conversation was in Russian. But not in the Baltic republics.
The veteran talked about a lot, including the painful one: “You know, we didn’t spare ourselves, we didn’t reckon with time. They thought about work, they lived with it, they went to work with pleasure. If it is a serious matter, then they spent the night in the office. Yes, they could drink a glass of vodka after work, but to take bribes or toss drugs, like today, this was not the case. My head does not fit. After all, we fought with criminals to be honest. They considered themselves to be professionals, we ourselves too, and if we replayed them, then the serious criminals blamed themselves: that the detectives or investigators turned out to be stronger. ”
Gennady Mikhailovich long retired. Listed in the Book of Honor of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. Together with his wife, Claudia Vasilievna, who, unfortunately, recently passed away, raised two sons. There are granddaughters and grandson, great-granddaughter grows. Such a decent and hectic life behind a front-line soldier.
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