To remember. Military stories of two grandfathers
Why did I decide to write this article? In November of this year, several articles appeared on the pages of VO about history asah "from that side." One of the readers was indignant and wrote that for him personally there are two heroes: two of his grandfathers. Someone considered this statement not relevant to the article, someone plusanul ... And I thought. Indeed, why not write about your own? Not that the laurels of the "Immortal Regiment" do not give rest ... No. It was just that both of my grandfathers had a difficult life, full of anxieties and trials, which filled the years of the formation of Soviet power.
Grandfather on the Russian side was called Peter Ivanovich. Born in 1913. A native of the Yaroslavl region, from a peasant family. When the time came, he was drafted into the army. But the service ended in almost twenty years!
It turned out that he served as an ordinary soldier: not a single extraordinary outfit! The command noted this and offered to go to sergeant courses. Formally - left in the army by order. And then off we go. He served as a sergeant - the new military training camps, and the newly-made foreman.
In 1938, he was on vacation at home and celebrated a wedding. Everything is like people have. Instead of a honeymoon, a direction to a new duty station. On North. With four triangles on the buttonholes, the grandfather took part in the Finnish Winter War. True, not for long - the “cuckoo” seriously wounded him in the head when he had to take command of the unit on himself. It was this wound that made itself felt more than others by the end of life.
After recovery, I went with my comrades to watch the pillboxes of the Mannerheim line, and then - a new training course at the training camp and the rank of junior lieutenant. Direction to Western Belarus.
I met the morning of June 22 in field camps. From his memories:
Then there was a long retreat. The starting point was Stalingrad. From there, my grandfather walked only to the West! Kubari were added, and later stars on uniform. Rewards and injuries were added (three more to the one received in Finnish), but anger was added from the sight of what the invaders did in the occupied territories.
When he was liberating a small town in Ukraine, he could not imagine that it was here that his youngest, unborn daughter would find her fate - her husband, my father. The same, not yet born, son of another war veteran. Such are the vital family intricacies ...
A lot of what happened to see the young officer in that war. Pavlov’s house in Stalingrad and captured Paulus, destroyed Kiev and Auschwitz concentration camp ...
Peter Ivanovich met the victory at the approaches to Prague. Initially, the unit was sent to Berlin, but the capital of the Third Reich fell, and they were deployed to the Czech Republic. The war is over, but ... He was especially saddened by the lack of knowledge of where and what happened to his family - his wife and two children left in Minsk. He searched and wrote throughout the war, but to no avail. As soon as the opportunity arose, he immediately asked for a vacation to return home and expand his search. But everything happened, as in good films: a wife with two children survived the occupation and returned home as soon as possible - literally just before her husband’s arrival.
Then there were still years of service, garrisons, units ... When the young combat major was offered the rank of lieutenant colonel and sent to Kushka, he decided that was enough. I wanted a simple family happiness. He returned home with his family to the Yaroslavl region, where he lived, raised children, raised us, four grandchildren.
A separate stand in the local museum of local lore, in which his photo and a short biography can tell the fellow countrymen about the military exploits.
We, the grandchildren, he spoke little about the war. But I want to retell some funny stories to you:
Here is the enemy - briskly flew up to the destroyed bridge, began to consult how to be. And here, on our side on the far flank, one of the young soldiers fired at the ducks in the swamp! From that side, unfolding from all the trunks on our shore! We are from our own - according to them! We look - there it’s already like installing mortars! Well, we think that they will set the heat on us now! .. Then he looked closely with binoculars - mortars like ours and the uniform on our soldiers ... He ordered to cease fire. From that shore, too, fell silent ... It turned out that another part of our environment was leaving. Thank God, only a few lightly wounded escaped ...
The second grandfather, Vasily Semenovich, met the war with a fifteen-year-old boy in a small village in the Kiev region. Together with his sister and mother, they watched the heavy messenger bomber roll down in the sky above them, as the Red Army retreated.
They took their father, drafted into the army, hiding in the cellar when the Nazis entered the village ...
In late autumn, familiar peasants from a neighboring village knocked on the house, who were called along with their father. They asked where he was, and were very surprised that he did not return home: it turns out that their team, without changing clothes, was loaded into the train and sent to the Crimea, but in the Kherson steppes it turned out that it was too late and it was impossible to return back - they were cut off. The team was dismissed and they, fellow countrymen, safely reached their home district. At the fork between the villages, they said goodbye and each parted at their own addresses. Where did the dad go?
Everything turned out in the spring, when one of the villagers went to the pit, in which they extracted clay for repairing the huts. From under the snow melt human remains appeared. Vasily recognized his father by his hat and belt. The fascist patrol, either by mistake or fun, shot a lone traveler a couple of kilometers from his home ...
Therefore, when in 1943 the Red Army liberated the Kiev region, Vasily added a year to himself and went to the draft board. Sent to tank troops. Gunner.
He fought a little over a year. Burned four times. He liberated Volyn, Poland, entered Germany. There, in Prussia near Konigsberg, he was ambushed. Grandfather did not like to talk about it, but when I entered the tank school, I still poured out my soul.
Everyone knew that victory was not far off. And they expected that, now, another blow, and the end of the war! They occupied a small German town famous for winemaking. Well, as expected, they celebrated this business. And then the brigade commander decides that with such fighting lads they will capture Koenigsberg! Moreover, there is an order for nomination. They started the car and rushed west without any security. When the convoy pulled into a narrow road, on one side of which a centuries-old oak forest grew, and a swamp spread out on the other, an armor-piercing blank of an anti-tank battery disguised as a quagmire hit the front tank. The next hit is in the closing machine. Well, then you yourself understand ...
When the grandfather jumped out of the burning tank and ran into the forest, a mortar was added to the shelling. I remembered a blow to the leg, then - that pulled on a raincoat tent ... Then the sanbat ...
A year in hospitals throughout the Soviet Union, formal discharge. But the treatment of the fragmented leg was not successful: pain, swelling, spots ... The next examination and the verdict is amputation. Vasily’s mother, my great-grandmother, fell to her knees in front of the doctors: how so? Nineteen years old, and already legless disabled ?!
An old orthopedist rose. Once again I looked at the pictures, interviewed my grandfather. He said that there is one way - to cut, break, merge and stitch everything all over again. But the leg will not bend. I took it personally. The fragments that had not yet grown together were removed from the leg, they were fastened and the grandfather was packed in gypsum from the chin to the heel for six months! The foot became shorter by a few centimeters, did not bend, but was its own, and not wooden.
In the same place, in the hospital, he met with a machine gun of a connected partisan detachment wounded in both legs. And after some time they played a wedding. After the war I learned to be an accountant, learned how to drive a car, and bought Zaporozhets. Raised two sons. He brought up his grandchildren, waited for his great-grandchildren ... He died tragically: an accident.
Some memoirs of Vasily Semenovich:
So you say (this is to me. - Auth.) That you read, they say, our German tanks could not penetrate at the beginning of the war. They are lying! "Thirty-four" managed to shoot only once! Then the head German stopped, turned the tower and also fired once - black smoke started from our tank immediately. And there the Red Army surrendered ...
And the second case - they entered the Polish inn. Well, this guy calls up the owner and orders everything, everything: meat, and bread, and fried fish ... Well, and a bottle, of course ... We are sitting neither alive nor dead. Nobody has money! They ate, drank ... The hypnotist calls the owner again, and so majestically he takes out paper for cigarettes from his pocket. Tears off a piece and holds out. He begins to bow, to thank ... He also brought change! That Muscovite did not stay long in the carriage - they took him to the army intelligence department ...
Then someone guessed to climb into the attic - looking, and there’s still a little room. Just where the chimney should be! We open, and there ... Hams, sausages, every bird, fat ... The smokehouse is mounted directly in the chimney!
This, of course, is not all the stories that I heard from grandfathers. But probably the most interesting. But whoever has been to the war does not like to remember it. But we can’t forget them!
In general, I told you about my grandfathers. Maybe someone else will share? I will be glad to read. Thanks for attention.
- Nazarius, leader of the redskins
- waralbum.ru
Information