Penalties
In textbooks, memoirs and other historical Stalin's Order No. 227 is mentioned so often that every Russian must have heard of it. Meanwhile, few people know the exact contents of this document, but meanwhile, it contains a lot of interesting things. For example, the following items:
2.b Form 3-5 armies (200 people in each) within the army, put them in the immediate rear of unstable divisions and bind them to perform panic attacks and panties in the event of panic and indiscriminate divisions your duty to the motherland.
2. Form within the front from five to ten (depending on the situation) penal companies (from 150 to 200 people in each), where to send ordinary soldiers and junior commanders who have been guilty of violating discipline on cowardice, and to give them they have the opportunity to atone for their crimes in front of their homeland.
Naturally, such tough measures were forced to take the situation prevailing at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, rather than the inherent bloodlust of the country's top leadership, not sung by the “singers of perestroika”.
"PRESS-DAVI"
A few months before the start of the war, Khaydar Iskandyarov, who served as the “urgent” in Karelia (337 th Infantry Regiment of the 54 th division), was transferred from a mortar platoon to an ambulance, immediately conferring the rank of sergeant (four “triangles” in the buttonhole) and putting position of medical assistant. Such a sharp career jump can be easily explained: they called on the Iskandyarovs to the army from the third year of the Saransk medical college.
The soldiers' service in the Karelian forests and swamps is an incredibly difficult affair. How many times during the exercise had to spend the night in the snow in a forty-degree frost. You wrap yourself in an overcoat - it feels warm, and in ten minutes you wake up from the sound of your own teeth. Nothing to do, you get up, you start to crouch, jump. After a couple of minutes, sweat pours hail and you can go to bed again. Another fifteen minutes ...
For a week each soldier was given a small disposable spirit lamp, similar to a thin tin can, with only a lid on top.
You open it, set it on fire, and you can melt the snow in the pot for tea, or warm the stiff hands. The fighters called these press-davi, and for their intended purpose they almost did not use (for obvious reasons).
Of course, the quartermasters, in order not to introduce soldiers into the temptation, refilled these units not with pure alcohol, but with some kind of mixture, but our guys quickly found a way out. Alcohol from the broken alcohol is poured on a towel, which is then squeezed over a cup (hence the name). On the fabric remained gray bloom, and the filtered liquid was taken inside. A little, but nice.
"IT WILL BE MORE TERRIBLE ..."
On the morning of June 22, 1941 found out about the beginning of the war. Immediately plunged into cars and to the border. Towards the wounded border guards wander, belted with machine-gun belts, like revolutionary sailors in the movies.
Iskandyarov found his regiment, reported to the battalion commander Samsonov (participant in the battles in Spain). Judging by the first order of the battalion commander, the situation on that sector of the front was the most crap.
- So, foreman, collect all the cooks, bread-breeder, gunsmith, orderlies. Anyone you find. There will be a small bridge ahead, take up the defense there and hold, don't let the Finns on.
Haydar gathered his “kitchen” team, and they went to carry out the order. More precisely crawled, just shelling began. Haydar himself crawled ahead, the remaining seven meters behind. And then it will gasp: ten shells one by one, very close. He pressed himself into the ground, decided to wait for his people, but they are still not there. He crawled back and his hair stood on end: shell craters, the earth was smoking, pieces of corpses about them. And all this is a few meters away. God spared, otherwise you could not tell.
Of his team, only one survived - the bread cutter Biryukov, and even that, both legs had the most groin blown off. Krovischa gushing, and the white, like a sheet. Iskandyarov spent the entire supply of bandages from the sanitary bag for dressing, and the blood does not stop. He took off his tunic from both, tore at the harnesses, somehow pulled the stumps, dragged Biryukov to the rear.
I reported Iskandyarov to the battalion commander: they did not even have time to get to the bridge. He silently looked at the guy stunned by the war, in the eyes of flashed sympathy. Haydar squeezed out of himself:
- Comrade Lieutenant Colonel, is it really always so scary at war?
- Eh, foreman, it will be even worse ...
MIRACLE SURVIVOR
First they fought with gambling fire in their eyes: “Why, we will definitely win. We have already broken into these Finns in the fortieth year, and now we wash them with our blood. ” Once it came to the fact that the company soldiers refused to execute the order to retreat. A rumble of voices over the trenches: they did not even have time to join the battle, but ordered to retreat. Senior Sakharov on the parapet jumped out.
- This is a treacherous order! Not a step back we will not do, we will fight!
They decided on that, and in an hour an adjutant of the regiment rode up on a limp horse.
- What are you, your mother, so sit here! Depart urgently, you are surrounded! Faster, faster !!!
Here they rushed ...
So they fought. Dug trenches, defended. They retreated, dug again, occupied again, retreated again ... Once, a Finnish machine-gunners fired at a convoy on the forest road. Of the fifty people, ten were killed in the first second, the rest rushed to the forest. At the deputy commander, Senior Lieutenant Svyatkin (a compatriot from Mordovia), he hit a cap with a bullet, and near Iskandyarov there was a very tight death. Sanitary bag, hanging on the right, pierced through with several bullets. The gas bag on the left is broken. Bowler, who carried in his hand, pierced. Once again, the Most High has saved.
And that was not the end of luck. During reconnaissance in force, officers of the company took cover behind a huge granite boulder. Komrot, deputy political officer, three platoon commanders and medical assistant Iskandyarov. It would seem that this machine will not penetrate any projectile. And then a shout from the chain: “Saninstruktor, here is wounded!” Just ran away, the mortar mine hit the same place (the trajectory was attached). All the officers on the spot.
"WELL, NOW RESOLVE ..."
27 July numbers 1942, the 54 Infantry Division, was taken to the Reserve for rest and replenishment. The next day, everyone built and read the same Order number 227. The introductory part struck the most: well, about the difficult situation on the fronts - this is clear, but here is an example BETTING WITH THE OPPONENT, creating penal companies and battalions. Here you can not find the words.
Iskandyarov thought to himself: “God forbid there to get there,” and a couple of days later he was summoned to the division headquarters. He took his deputy. by political part. Surname, name, patronymic? .. Nationality? .. Tatar? This is good, the Tatars are fighting guys.
- Such a thing, comrade foreman, we were recommended to you as a good specialist. It was decided to send you as a paramedic to the division's company. It’s good there, in six years, it’s coming, you’ll get home earlier. And the salary of the permanent composition, as in the guards parts - double.
Haydar, as expected, replied: “Yes!”, And the thought struck in the brain “This is what bastard recommended me ?!”
Following the appointment, an order followed: to find the rear of the penalty company. Two fines in black were escorted to Iskandyarov’s place naval form - sailors or from the Marine Corps. Walking through the woods for a long time, three kilometers, and in my head one thought: “Well, that's it, they’ll kill now!”
In fact, everything was not so scary. The company commander is an old acquaintance, senior lieutenant Bondar, a member of the "Finnish" who was a sergeant in the regimental training room. It was he who, as it turned out, dragged the assistant doctor of Iskandyarov to himself. Cooper, it seems, before the service had time to "sit out": a paramedic, in any case, he called on the camp - "lepila."
In a separate 51-th penal company sent soldiers of the division for purely army crimes. However, whether you consider these acts as crimes is you, dear reader, decide for yourself. In the penalty area, for example, scouts got who couldn’t get all their dead and wounded out of the “search”. And one foreman came under the tribunal because he was sent to the rear to receive the Narkomovskys to the whole battalion. He received them - a twenty-liter canister of vodka for two hundred people, and on the way back he looked to a familiar nurse from the medical battalion. While they were shura-mura there were diluting, someone took the canister.
The official crime is obvious, but the foreman is a scout honored, he “dragged” “more than once”, has awards. On this occasion, even a special meeting of the tribunal took place: to deprive him of his orders, or to leave? We decided to leave.
The rule of staying in the penal company was the simplest. I fought for three months and return to my unit. If he was injured, then immediately after the injury. And again, Iskandyarov was lucky: in the company there was a vacant post of platoon commander. Hydera was appointed to it and assigned the rank of lieutenant right away. True, in this position, Iskandyarov spent only a week, but the title remained.
Service at the penalty box remained just a service: keep the defense, do not let the enemy. Of course, the penalty box was allocated the most dangerous section, where not a single day passed without shelling, but this was only the usual front-line life. Having fun, shouting to the Finns through the neutral strip. Those: “Soldiers, your case is lost, we will kill you anyway, go to us, surrender. There will be warm women at your side and a quiet peaceful life. ” And our sailors masterfully wrapped them in response to front-line obscene poems: “I'll tell you without notes, bitch ё..may in my mouth ...” Fun, in short. And half a kilometer behind the company, another line of trenches was dug, and in it were soldiers with machine guns. Barrier squad. In the case of retreat penalty box "cheer" bursts in the back. It's fun too.
However, the penalty box is not discouraged. Once they came out of the bathhouse and met the regimental commander by the name of Sologub, who was riding in his sleigh in the forest. They threw him along with the adjutant and the driver, saying "our commanders walk on foot." Then they drove the horse and sleigh to the commander of the penalty area: take it, senior. Cooper, of course, obscended them: "Take back!" Those in any: well-known business, will not be sent on the front, no more bullets will be given ...
Another time, two boxes of canned food were gone from the divisional warehouse. Storekeepers call into the penalty area: “They are yours, there is nobody else!” They organized, of course, an inquiry, but they did not find a single bank. Later, when everything was eaten, the men themselves admitted. They, it turns out, dragged boxes to the "neutral" at night, about a hundred meters from the front edge. At night, crawled, got as much as necessary. Risk, but well fed.
In the penalty was not long: someone has served his time and returned to part, someone killed. Replenishment did not come even once and in six months the company was disbanded. Iskandyarov returned to normal front-line life as a paramedic in the 118 regiment.
"I HAVE HANDS ..."
After some time, they again summoned me to the division headquarters: you already have experience, you will go to the newly created 51 penal company. What can you do, you have to ...
The matter seems to be customary, but this time the contingent is different - Rostov, Astrakhan and Odessa thieves. Healthy men of thirty years and older. All blue from prison tattoos. Well, right picture galleries: “rings” on the fingers, crosses on the entire back ... One, it is a shame to say, even in that very place, a messy picture is cracked.
Yesterday's convicts talked about past life without embarrassment. One (a cultural one), appointed as orderlies for Iskandyarov, immediately said: “I was a bear hunter, I broke the locks at the safes”. And immediately followed by a purely business proposal: “You, Lieutenant, let me go, and in three days I will make your parents naked.” Thieves, what else to say.
There were even two intellectuals among the penalty box: an engineer who did not have time to repair the plumbing in his city, and the head of one of the correctional colonies (it’s strange that he hadn’t been killed on the train). When an engineer, when he fell asleep in the sun, a Rostov thief by the name of Bondarenko took off his watch and brought it to Iskandyarov:
“Lieutenant, we saw you have no hours.” Take it, wear it.
- What are you, sdurel, take them back!
- Though kill, I will not bear back.
And this case was not the last. Another medical orderly brought Iskandyarov a white medical gown, a stethoscope and new felt boots. Take, they say, lieutenant, on the occasion got. And it turns out that they stole them in the medical battalion. When they called the company about this, Haydar could not resist, grabbed one of the donated boots and began to hunt down the “donor” for what it was:
- You, bastard, what did you bring to me ?! Bring it all back immediately.
- Hey, lieutenant, you at least kill me, at least shoot, but I will not carry anything back. I am a thief, this is my bastard.
A shot, I must say, in the penalty company without any. The officer from the special department - the “mansion”, who oversaw the penalty box, had full power here. For example, one of the soldiers refused to go to the post. They began to persuade him, but he didn’t say: “I’m not going and that's all!” Valanden Day was with him, two ... and on the third a company was built, a company company came forward with a "private house", read the order on the sentence to the highest measure, then ordered so and so, fail. From that moment, the entire thugger’s ambition immediately flew off, screamed “No, no, I will not do it again, do not shoot !!!” And he rests ... He knew his company well, called the same “refusers” by surname.
- Deactivate the convict.
Those hint understood: today it, tomorrow them. They dragged ... and the grave was already dug out not far away ...
For a long time a company with a “mansion” argued - to whom of them the guilty were withdrawn. The dispute won the company.
Another one went on trial for a self-shot - a hand through a hat filled with earth, shot through. Nobody arrested him, just set up separately before building. The Mansion read the sentence, without unnecessary words, pulled the TT from the holster and put a bullet in the back of the head. Point blank. And the next morning I called the division and reported: "Dad, I slapped one here."
In general, cons, they are everywhere cons. At the forefront, knives were made of iron pieces. And the handles are not simple, but type-setting, in three colors - white, black and gray. Of what?!! Who knows.
Soon, in the 44 year, the offensive began. Penalties, as usual, drove into the meat grinder. Iskandyarov did not see all the charms of these fights, he was a little behind. But here it was forever in memory how it was brought to him that very Rostov thief Bondarenko was brought to him. The leg above the knee is torn off, the bone sticks out, the rags of bloody meat are hanging ... And he is happy, he is smiling, he is screaming at the throat of a cruel song. I have not broken my mind from pain.
- Are you crazy? !! You have no legs.
And he grinned gold fixes:
- Eh, lieutenant, what do you understand? No legs, but his hands remained. I'm a thief, my legs are useless.
"FOR WHAT HAS GOT? .."
In the penal company of Iskandyarov until the autumn of 44, until the next disbandment, the surviving penalty box was transferred to full rights. Then he fought like everyone else. The commanders did not particularly indulge in awards: the medals “For Military Merit”, “For Bravery” (he pulled twenty-five wounded from the battlefield weapons), the Order of the Red Star, the medal "For the capture of Koenigsberg", "For the liberation of Prague", "For the victory over Germany."
When it came time to retire, it turned out that forty-year-old Haidar Sabirovich Iskandyarov had already passed his seniority in his third decade: in a war in three years, in a penalty year in six. When I met with front-line soldiers in Saransk, traditional conversations were started: “Where did you fight? Since when? ”Hearing that he served in the penalty company, almost everyone asked:“ What did you get? ”I had to explain.
After the war, he met only one of his "wards". It was in Volgograd and he seems to have tied up with his former life. And in his native Lyambir district, he met a peasant who served at the time in the home guard. He said reluctantly, but after a few years he just hanged himself. It can be seen, could not live with the memories of how to shoot at his machine gun.
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