"In yellow hot Africa, in its central part"

19
I apologize for copy-paste, but too colorful story happened Perhaps this is a written story, perhaps a tattered numerous fables from the lives of people unfamiliar to each other, and it is still possible that this is true. The truth that happened in this world. There was simply no one to tell her.

"In yellow hot Africa, in its central part"

My name is Michael Fogetti, I am the captain of the United States Marine Corps. Recently, I saw in a magazine a photograph of a Russian monument from Treptow Park in Berlin and remembered one of the episodes of my service. My platoon, after performing a special operation, received an order to wait for evacuation at a given point, but we could not get to that point.

In the area of ​​the Golden Horn, as always, it was hot in every sense of the word. Locals clearly was not enough one revolution. They needed at least three of them, a couple of civil wars and, in addition, one religious conflict. We completed the task and now hurried to the rendezvous point with the boat, on which we were to arrive at the place of evacuation.

But we were waiting for a surprise. On the outskirts of a small seaside town, we were greeted by fussingly crowded groups of armed men. They squinted at us, but did not touch, because a column of five jeeps, bristling with the trunks of M-16 and M-60, drew respect. Along the street, cars with traces of shelling and blatant looting periodically came across, but it was these objects that caused the main interest of peyzans, and armed marauders had a clear priority over unarmed ones.

* Small explanation: the events being described unfold in the now infamous Gulf of Aden. “Tankist”, aka “bearded captain” - Major Eremenko Nikolay Ignatievich, commander of a separate battalion of 104 TB, a dowry of the UN mission. Event Years: 1975

When we noticed several corpses of obvious Europeans near the walls of the houses, I ordered to be on the alert, but without an order not to open fire. At that moment, a white woman with a girl in her arms ran out of a narrow alley, followed by three local niggas (sorry, African-Africans) with laughter. We were not up to political correctness. The woman with the child was instantly dragged into the jeep, and her pursuers were squeezed and unequivocally threatened with a machine gun barrel, but intoxication with impunity and shed blood played a bad joke on the bastards. One of them picked up his G-3 and was clearly prepared to shoot at us, Marine Kolone automatically pressed the machine gun trigger and then we rushed under the ever-increasing firing. It is good that these freaks did not know how to shoot straight. We flew up to the hill on which the city was actually located, and saw the port panorama below, the brightest fragment of which was a steamboat blazing at the pier.

The port has accumulated more than a thousand European civilian specialists and their families. Considering that independence was declared in the adjoining area and at the same time jihad, they all yearned for the speediest evacuation. As mentioned above, the ship, on which they were supposed to evacuate the refugees, burned merrily in the roadstead, on the outskirts of the city crowds of insurgents concentrated, and from friendly forces there was only my platoon with six machine guns and a sour walkie-talkie (walkie-toki do not count).

We had a floating craft ready for a hike and a perfectly camouflaged boat, but only we could fit there. We had no right to abandon women and children to the mercy of fate. I described the situation to the guys and said that I stay here and have no right to order any of them to remain with me, and that the order for our evacuation is in force and the boat is on the move.

But to the credit of my guys, everything remained. I calculated the available forces ... twenty-nine marines, including me, seven demobilized French legionaries and 11 sailors from a sunken steamer, two dozen civilian volunteers. The port during the Second World War was a transshipment base and several dozen stone warehouses surrounded by a solid wall with turrets and other architectural excesses of the last century, as if descended from the pages of Kipling and Bussenar, looked quite solid and suitable for defense.

This complex and served us a new fort Alamo. Plus, in these warehouses were placed warehouses with UN humanitarian aid, there were also old barracks, in which both the water supply and sewage system worked, of course there were not enough toilets for so many people, not to mention the soul, but this is better than nothing. By the way, half of one of the warehouses was crammed with drawers with good whiskey. Apparently, one of the UN officials did his little gesheft here. That is, the whole situation, in addition to the military, was normal, and the military situation was as follows ...

More than three thousand insurgents, consisting of a revolutionary guard, irregular formations and a rabble who wanted to plunder, armed for our happiness only light weapons from the 98 Mauser and Sturmgeverov to the Kalashnikov and Stenov automatic rifles, periodically attacked our perimeter. The locals had three old French cannons, from which they managed to sink the unfortunate steamer, but the legionnaires were able to seize the battery and blow up the guns and ammunition.

At the moment we could oppose them: X-NUMX M-23 rifles, X-NUMX machine guns M-16, 6 Chinese Kalashnikovs and five creepy Russian machine guns made in China, with fifty-caliber cartridges. In the first place, they helped us keep the enemy at a proper distance, but the cartridges for them ended up with terrifying speed.

The French said that through the 10-12 hours, another ship would be suitable, and even accompanied by a patrol, but this watch still had to last. And the besiegers had one big incentive in the form of warehouses with humanitarian aid and hundreds of white women. All kinds of these products are highly valued here. If they think of attacking simultaneously from the South, and from the West, and from the North, then we will definitely beat off one attack, but the second one may not be enough ammunition. Our radio shlopotala bullet, when we were just approaching the port, and walkie-currents beat almost only a few kilometers. I put on the old lighthouse with a sniper master sergeant Smithy - our radio god. There he smudged something from two radios, but there was not much sense from this yet.

The enemy did not have snipers and this made me very happy. The city was above the port, and from the roofs of some buildings, the territory occupied by us was in full view, but the planning of the city worked in our favor. Five straight streets descended exactly to the wall we were defending and easily shot through turrets, belvederes and bay windows ... And then another attack began. She was from two opposite directions and was quite massive.

The previous failures taught insurgents something, and they kept our machine guns under heavy fire. In five minutes three machine-gunners were wounded, another was killed. At that moment, the enemy struck the central gates of the complex: they tried to knock out the gates with a truck. They almost succeeded. One door was partially knocked out, dozens of armed figures poured into the courtyard. The last reserve of defense - the detachment of Corporal Westheimer - repelled the attack, but lost three people wounded, including one hard. It became clear that the next attack might be the last for us, we had two more gates, and there were enough heavy trucks in the city. We were lucky that the time for namaz came and, taking advantage of the respite and mobilizing the maximum number of civilians, we began to barricade the gate with all available means.

Suddenly, a call from Smithy came to my radio:

- “Sir. I have some incomprehensible challenge and it seems from the Russians. They require a senior. Let me switch to you? ”

- “Why did you decide that this is Russian?”

“They said that solar Siberia causes us, and Siberia, it seems to be in Russia ...”

- “Go ahead,” I said, and I heard English in my earpiece with a slight but clearly Russian accent ...

“Can I find out what United States Marine Corps is doing in the territory entrusted to me?” Was the question.

- “Here is Marine First Lieutenant * Michael Fogetti. With whom do I have the honor? ”- I in turn asked.

“You have the honor of talking, Lieutenant, to someone who is the only one in this part of Africa Tanksthat can radically change the situation. And my name is Tankist. ”

I had nothing to lose. I described the whole situation, avoiding, of course, the question of our combat “power”. In response, the Russian inquired whether, say, my minor report was a request for help. Considering that the shooting around the perimeter rose with a new force, and it was clearly a massive attack of the besiegers, I remembered the old days of Winston, who once said, “that if Hitler had invaded hell, then he, Churchill, would conclude an alliance against him the devil ... ”, and answered the Russian affirmatively. What followed the next tirade:

- ”Mark enemy positions with red rockets and wait. When tanks appear in your visibility zone, this is what we will be. But I warn you: if at least one shot follows my tanks, all that the local peyzans want to do to you will seem to you to be nirvana compared to what I will do to you. ”

When I asked for clarification on when exactly they would fit into the zone of direct visibility, the Russian officer asked whether I was from Texas, but after receiving a negative answer, he expressed confidence that I know that Africa is more than Texas, and I do not take offense at all.

I ordered to mark the clusters of enemy fighters with red missiles, not to lean out and not to shoot at tanks, in case they appear. And then it burst out. He beat at least ten trunks, with a caliber of at least 100 millimeters. Part of the insurgents rushed to escape from the explosions in our direction, and we met them, not saving the last shops and ribbons. And in the gaps between the houses, on all the streets at the same time the silhouettes of the T-54 tanks, covered with the landing force, appeared.

Fighting vehicles raced like chariots of fire. Both turret machine guns and paratroopers fired. More recently, seemingly formidable, the host of besiegers dispersed like smoke. The paratroopers jumped off their armor, and, scattering around the tanks, began to strip the nearby houses. Across the front of their offensive, short submachine gunfire and deaf explosions of grenades were heard in the premises. From the roof of one of the houses, a line suddenly struck, three tanks immediately turned the turret towards the last refuge of the crazy hero of jihad, and a building volley immediately turned into a building explosion, deprived the city of one of the architectural excesses.

I caught myself thinking that I would not like to be the target of a Russian tank attack, and even if I were with the whole battalion with support units, we would not be a serious obstacle for these fast-moving armored monsters with red stars. And the matter was not at all in the firepower of Russian combat vehicles ... I saw through binoculars the faces of Russian tankers sitting on the towers of their tanks: in these faces there was absolute certainty of victory over any enemy. And it is stronger than any caliber.

The Russian commander, my peer, too tall for a tankman, a tanned and bearded captain, introduced himself as an illegible Russian name for my poor ear, shook my hand and pointedly pointed to my tank. We comfortably settled on the tower, when suddenly a Russian officer abruptly pushed me to the side. He jumped up, tearing the machine gun from his shoulder, something struck with a rustling whistle, again and again. The Russian jerked, a trickle of blood crawled across his forehead, but he picked up the machine gun and gave somewhere two short lines, picked up by a clearly-stingy line of the turret machine gun from a nearby tank.

Then, apologizing to me, he smiled and pointed to the customs balcony overlooking the square in front of the port wall. They guessed the body of a man in a dirty burnous and glittered the barrel of an automatic rifle. I realized that I just saved a life. The black-haired girl (Cuban, as well as part of the tank crews and paratroopers) in a camouflage jumpsuit, in the meantime, tied up my rescuer's head, saying in Spanish that forever signor captain climbs under bullets, and in an unexpected outburst of my soul I took a copy of my Purple from my inside pocket. Heart, with whom he never parted, as with the luck talisman, and stretched it to the Russian tankman. In some confusion, he accepted an unexpected gift, then shouted something in Russian into the open hatch of his tank. A minute later, a hand came out, holding a huge plastic holster with a huge pistol. The Russian officer smiled and handed it to me.

And Russian tanks had already turned along the wall, pointing guns at the city. Three cars through the newly opened and unbraked gates entered the port area, and I was on the front armor. Refugees poured out of the warehouses, women cried and laughed, children jumped and squealed, men in uniform and without screaming and whistling. The Russian captain leaned toward me and, shouting over the noise, said: “That's it, Marine. The one who never entered the liberated city on a tank did not experience a real celebration of the soul, it’s not for you to land from the sea ”. And slapped me on the shoulder.

Tankers and paratroopers were embraced, some presents and bottles were stretched to them, and a girl of six approached the Russian captain, smiling shyly, handed him a chocolate bar from humanitarian aid. The Russian tanker grabbed her and gently lifted her, she put her arm around his neck, and a feeling of deja vu suddenly came to me.

I remembered how several years ago in a tourist trip around West and East Berlin we were shown a Russian monument in Treptow Park. Our tour guide, an elderly German woman with an irritated face, showed the huge figure of a Russian soldier with a rescued child in her arms and strained scornful phrases in bad English. She said that it was all a big communist lie, and that apart from evil and violence the Russians brought nothing to the land of Germany.

As if the veil fell from my eyes. Before me stood a Russian officer with a rescued child in her arms. And it was a reality and, therefore, that German in Berlin was lying, and that Russian soldier from the pedestal, in that reality also saved the child. So maybe our propaganda is lying about the fact that the Russians are sleeping and seeing how to destroy America. No, for a simple first lieutenant of the marines, such high matters are too complicated. I gave up on all this with my hand and clinked glasses with a Russian bottle of whiskey, it is unknown how it turned out in my hand.

On the same day, we managed to get in touch with the French steamer, going here under the UN auspices, and sailing at two in the morning. Before dawn was loading. The steamer sailed away from the inhospitable shore, when the sun was already high enough. And while the inhospitable shore did not disappear into the haze, the little girl waved a handkerchief left to the Russian tank crews. Master Sergeant Smith, who was a noted philosopher in our country, thoughtfully said:

“I would never want the Russians to seriously fight us.” Let it be unpatriotic, but I feel that they will surely hope ass for us. ” And, on reflection, he added: “Well, they drink so cool, as we never dreamed ... Suck a bottle of whiskey from the neck and not in one eye ... And yet nobody will believe us, they will say that even Davy Croquet will not think of such a thing” ...

* According to Marshal Vasily Chuikov, the prototype of the statue of the Liberator Warrior was the denominator of the 220 Guards Rifle Regiment of the 79 Guards Rifle Division Sergeant Nikolai Masalov. 26 April 1945 during the fighting in the center of Berlin, Masalov took a three-year-old German girl out of the shelling zone. At the same time, it is possible that the sculptor Vuchetich did not know about such an episode of military history. For the monument he was posed by the then commander of a rifle platoon Victor Gunaz.
Our news channels

Subscribe and stay up to date with the latest news and the most important events of the day.

19 comments
Information
Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.
  1. tut ya
    +1
    24 October 2012 10: 59
    fairy tale sent again laughing
    1. Kortik
      +9
      25 October 2012 23: 09
      But a positive fairy tale - and it pleases.
  2. +16
    24 October 2012 11: 15
    Even if somewhere a little and lured - thanks anyway for the GOOD mood you presented
    1. tut ya
      +5
      24 October 2012 11: 22
      this is an artistic story, has already been on this site
  3. RomanNVKZ
    +5
    24 October 2012 11: 20
    I believe that the article is reality =)
    1. tut ya
      +1
      24 October 2012 14: 15
      http://artofwar.ru/c/chekmarew_w_a/text_0510.shtml
  4. +7
    24 October 2012 11: 20

    tut ya
    fairy tale sent again


    On such tales
    It stood, It stands and It will stand Russian land
    And not one generation of true patriots has grown up on such tales - ordinary Russian guys and girls.
    1. +1
      26 November 2012 00: 37
      a fairy tale is a lie, but a hint in it.
  5. +9
    24 October 2012 11: 44
    The second time I read this "fairy tale", the second time I can hardly hold back tears.
    GLORY TO THE SOVIET SOLDIER !!!!!
  6. +5
    24 October 2012 12: 26
    In each Tale there is some truth. And the power is in truth. From this there are many such tales. From that we are strong.
  7. +4
    24 October 2012 12: 55
    great article
  8. +6
    24 October 2012 14: 39
    This text evokes a sense of pride in Russian people. Plus, it is quite politically correct. Thank you for the article.
  9. Bismark
    +4
    24 October 2012 19: 42
    I liked the article. Big and fat plus good !
  10. +2
    28 October 2012 14: 04
    Positive !!!
  11. +4
    31 October 2012 16: 37
    If there were more such articles, there would have been more respect for our army men.
  12. NIXMOR
    +4
    4 November 2012 11: 00
    Thanks to such articles, patriotism is brought up, which, unfortunately, our youth do not have.
  13. bart74
    -2
    18 November 2012 04: 09
    No need to go where their mother did not send !!!
    1. +5
      23 November 2012 19: 36
      Dear!
      Before you bang claudia, in a hurry to give comments, bother to at least carefully read what you are commenting on! Amer was there under a UN mission. Similarly, in their place, there could be ours!
      But in fact, the point is not that it is a fairy tale, or not a fairy tale. The thing is that people should always remain PEOPLE !!! For this thought to the author - bold +!
  14. +2
    26 November 2012 18: 42
    Pleased, even if the story is fictitious.
  15. slava.iwasenko
    0
    6 January 2013 20: 28
    Already the mood has risen !!! fellow
  16. Mr.Fox
    0
    20 January 2013 18: 19
    A beautiful fairy tale, read once :) It is written in too good literary language to be true. But interesting.
  17. busido4561
    0
    24 February 2013 13: 57
    I liked, touched my soul, once again there was pride for the SOVIET SOLDIER! soldier
  18. 0
    22 January 2015 10: 33
    A couple of years ago, an interesting article was published in an American newspaper on the 40th anniversary of a small but dirty war waged by the United States, Algeria, Ethiopia and Somalia. There are no rightists in this war, only those to blame.

    A small explanation: the events described unfold in the now infamous Gulf of Aden. “Tankist”, aka “bearded captain” - Major Eremenko Nikolay Ignatievich, commander of a separate 104th tank battalion attached to the UN mission.

    http://ru-an.info/news_content_print.php?id=946

"Right Sector" (banned in Russia), "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) (banned in Russia), ISIS (banned in Russia), "Jabhat Fatah al-Sham" formerly "Jabhat al-Nusra" (banned in Russia) , Taliban (banned in Russia), Al-Qaeda (banned in Russia), Anti-Corruption Foundation (banned in Russia), Navalny Headquarters (banned in Russia), Facebook (banned in Russia), Instagram (banned in Russia), Meta (banned in Russia), Misanthropic Division (banned in Russia), Azov (banned in Russia), Muslim Brotherhood (banned in Russia), Aum Shinrikyo (banned in Russia), AUE (banned in Russia), UNA-UNSO (banned in Russia), Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People (banned in Russia), Legion “Freedom of Russia” (armed formation, recognized as terrorist in the Russian Federation and banned)

“Non-profit organizations, unregistered public associations or individuals performing the functions of a foreign agent,” as well as media outlets performing the functions of a foreign agent: “Medusa”; "Voice of America"; "Realities"; "Present time"; "Radio Freedom"; Ponomarev; Savitskaya; Markelov; Kamalyagin; Apakhonchich; Makarevich; Dud; Gordon; Zhdanov; Medvedev; Fedorov; "Owl"; "Alliance of Doctors"; "RKK" "Levada Center"; "Memorial"; "Voice"; "Person and law"; "Rain"; "Mediazone"; "Deutsche Welle"; QMS "Caucasian Knot"; "Insider"; "New Newspaper"