I dream of Afghan mountains
- I often dream about Afghanistan. No, not war, - in recent years, thank God, she no longer dreams, but the mountains: high, beautiful. Probably not enough I was there, I did not see it ... In Afghanistan, the holder of three orders of the Red Star, retired colonel Yuri Fedorishchev fought from December 1981 th to March 1984 th. He commanded a separate battalion of defense of the Bagram airbase. He was blown up by mines three times, was seriously wounded, since then he has limped noticeably, and in his right hand several fragments have remained unrecovered.
Nowadays Yury Matveyevich is a deputy of the Kaliningrad Regional Duma and the Chairman of the Board of the Association of Soldiers-Internationalists of the Kaliningrad Region. He has the honorary title "Man of the Year-2000. Kaliningrad. He is also an avid traveler and sensible narrator, the author of two unpublished manuscripts so far: “In a strange house” - about events in Afghanistan and “From Kaliningrad to Kamchatka and back” - about the main journeys in his life.
I met Fedorishchev more than once, wrote something down, memorized something. The reader, I have no doubt, it will be interesting to get in touch with the fate of this outstanding, viable person. I decided to tell my story about him in the first person, more personally.
The roots
- My surname is rare. If you dig well, it turns out that almost all of its owners come from the Old Believers of the Vyatka province - there are my paternal roots. In the seventeenth century, part of the Vyatka Old Believers moved to Siberia, where they founded the village (the current Kansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory). So my ancestors "historical", I probably inherited from them a craving for travel.
My father, Matvey Prokopievich, like most of the village men, was a hunter. In the 1928 year, fleeing from "collectivization", he left for Kamchatka. There he graduated from the tractor courses. I transported the newly recruited “newcomers” and met my mother, Vera Konstantinovna, she came from Altai. I had four brothers and three sisters; I was one of the youngest in my family. There are no brothers anymore, the sisters still live in Kamchatka, I visit them every year now.
In 1936, my father retrained to be a driver and became the first driver of a motor vehicle in Kamchatka. In the summer of 1945, he was drafted into the army. He participated in the Kuril landing operation. He told how the marines on fragile water craft landed on the island of Shumshu under a hurricane fire, advanced into the territory with a battle, as many were dead and drowned. The father was then awarded the medal "For Courage", which he cherished.
Sultan chose
- I became a professional military by accident. When in the 1962 year it was time to be drafted into the army, the military commissar offered to go to a military school. By that time, I had a job at the shipyard, in geological exploration, at a construction site in geological management — I started working early. Everything was going to be a geologist to me: the geological management was taken to help me go to college and pay a good scholarship for those times in 130 rubles.
But I wanted complete independence, and as soon as possible. So I decided to become an officer. He chose his choice on the profession of a military pilot: everyone had the ear of Gagarin. However, like me romantics was in abundance. In the end, I was sent to Blagoveshchensk, to the Far Eastern Higher All-Arms Command School.
Four years later, with nine parachute jumps and a young wife Nina, whom I met on vacation in Kiev, by distribution and voluntarily went to serve in Kamchatka, in the 304 motorized rifle regiment of the famous Chapayev division.
Three years commanded a platoon. And suddenly they offer a transfer to Germany - to the 2nd tank army in the city of Schwerin. I did not refuse. But I didn’t like Germany: some gloomy, gloomy houses there. In 1973, he joyfully transferred to Gvardeysk, Kaliningrad Region, already the commander of a motorized rifle battalion.
Time passed quickly: classes, teachings, checks. In 1980, I wrote a report asking me to send me to Afghanistan: there was a purely professional interest, and a desire to see new lands, and I stayed in one place. Initially received a refusal, and a year later they call from the staff: will you go? What questions! So I was appointed commander of a separate defense battalion, which I myself formed. Wife said that I was going on a regular business trip to the landfill.
Afghanistan
- The train reached Termez. A week and a half went into combat reconciliation, then we gave out new machines and equipment, and in the morning of December 10 we crossed the border. A column of 41 battalion and fifty cars, mainly Uralov, stretched for more than a kilometer. Immediately came the feeling and danger, and responsibility for the lives of 540 people. In the ditch lay padded equipment. Ahead was the Salang tunnel ...After three days without a loss of profit in Bagram, where the paratroopers stood. One of the battalions was commanded by Captain Alexander Lebed. He handed over under my responsibility the object he guarded - the airfield, as well as everything that was on its territory (aircraft repair enterprises and workshops, repair and construction organizations, medical battalion, infectious diseases hospital, bakeries, artesian well, settlement of military advisers and flight crews, the headquarters of the 108 th motorized rifle division, and so on). The Afghan guard battalion and the tank company were given to help me.
Around wherever you look, villages and duvali. Peace did not give from the very beginning. One Toyota jumped from one direction to another, a mortar was quickly pulled out of it, and a fire was fired from it. Every night, often during the day, they fired from small weapons. Already in December, the first losses appeared. To protect the airfield from attacks, they tried to surround it with trenches, but it did not solve the problem. Then I began to create a new defense system, remote from the airfield, arranging retractable posts in the villages so that they could interact with each other. Dushmans didn’t like it: put up a new post - wait for a quick attack. But the shelling of the airfield stopped.
Such a story contributed to the growth of my authority among the local population. The Afghan government has decided to demolish the villages surrounding the airport. In return, they promised to pay monetary compensation to residents. The people were very excited, nobody wanted to leave the habitable places. For negotiations, aksakals frequented me. It took a long time to convince the Afghan authorities and their own command to leave everything as it is. For this service, the locals then repeatedly helped me. However, war is war, and the East is a delicate matter.
The first time I hit a mine on May 2, I drove out to one of the villages in a beteer to talk to its residents. The explosion occurred just below me, the benefit was sitting on the armor. He took off two meters, further - as in a slow-motion movie: at the top I see my own legs and the sun breaking through the dust. He came to his senses, moved to another Beteer, drove on - let them know that you will not take a fright. Then he got off with a concussion, did not turn to the doctors. In November, he tried his luck again. He was in the mountains, at the furthest retractable post near the Panscher River. On the way back, the Beteer did not have time to drive off from the foot of the mountain - an explosion. Again dropped from armor, again contusion. Two weeks lay in the medical battalion.
God had mercy on me for almost a year, until October 17 1983. On that day, as usual, I was driving to the post in the Beteher, and here ... On the one hand, it was a land mine, on the other - mine. The explosion was so strong that I was thrown out like a feather through the hatch, the torn off half-wheel collapsed on top, pushed back into the hatch and so crushed that when I regained consciousness, I could not move. The driver's legs are broken, my arm is completely broken, my legs are also damaged. Ears are laid, head is buzzing. Month lain in the medical battalion, then another two months in the hospital. Doctors gathered the broken bone in pieces, some of it was replaced with an endoprosthesis. They handed me the collected fragments for memory, and some remained in the hand. In March 1984, I returned to the Union.
Overcoming
- When I was still hovering on crutches in the Afghan hospital, the doctors told me: forget about driving a car and your travels, now you will have to walk with your wand until the end of your life. Rejoice that at least you will walk like this and that you have stayed alive!
Upon returning to the Union, he was appointed chief of staff of a motorized rifle regiment in the Kaliningrad region. Wounds and contusions were not released, I felt disgusting. Exhausting tension, coming out later, was replaced by weakness. Hellish pains, insomnia. You go - starts to lead aside, memory is disconnected. Service, of course, was not a joy. Once again I was in the hospital, then in the other. I already gave up on myself, resigned. Then suddenly something in me leaped: will I really stay in hospitals until the end of my life, when there is so much interesting around that I haven’t seen yet?
And I began to deduce myself from this state, to break the situation: I ran, jumped, did various exercises. Through "I can not", through fainting pain. He worked on himself for several years. And what medicine could not do, I did it myself: I got behind the wheel of the car again, started walking again, and without any stick. In 1989, he retired from the post of military commissar of the Central District of Kaliningrad, in which he was four years old, and went on a trip to the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.
Travels
“I made my first trip as a schoolboy, with a group of similar young tourists visiting the famous Valley of Geysers. On foot and on horseback, we then traveled over 200 kilometers. In 16 years, I had the “Tourist USSR” badge and a certificate for it. I always traveled and then - every vacation went somewhere or went. After Afghanistan there was a big break. So, having left the service, he got on a train and went to Armenia.
She has not recovered from the terrible earthquake. In Leninakan, he helped rake the ruins of the Orthodox Church for a week. I visited Spitak and Yerevan, on foot I reached Baku. On the ship, he crossed the Caspian Sea to Kislovodsk, from there he drove to Ashgabat by car. Then there were Bukhara, Samarkand, Dushanbe, Zarafshan Valley, Leninabad, Tashkent. In Dushanbe, he met with two former colleagues of Bagram - military translators, ordinary Kholov and major Tugunov (by that time already colonel). I was just preparing a book about Afghanistan, it was necessary to clarify something. There were a lot of impressions. I found and hit 12 thousands of kilometers. He returned to Kaliningrad by plane six months after his departure.
I took the biggest and longest trip later, in 1998. Coming out of Baltiysk, I walked and rode almost all of Russia on the slats - to Magadan. Then he flew by plane to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, walked along the Kamchatka River to Ust-Kamchatsk, a settlement on the east coast of the peninsula. Returning from Kamchatka, I jumped by plane to Vladivostok, then, changing the route, so as not to repeat myself, I went back.
For a year and a half, 32 passed and traveled thousands of kilometers, visited 68 regions, territories and republics, including the North Caucasus, where hostilities took place, as well as Lithuania, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. I had a thick notebook with me. In each city, in each locality through which I walked, I visited the local administration (if it was, of course, there was), asked to make a brief record and stamp. There were more than 300 such records with seals, barely fit.
They met me, as a rule, well: in administrations, military enlistment offices, veterans' organizations, just locals. Helped with accommodation and with provisions. Saw anything. I always had a loaf of bread in my backpack — I gave it to hungry old people more than once. The conclusion was made: the harder people live, the harder their lives, the more responsive and kinder they are.
During this campaign, he realized his old dream - he collected new information about his ancestors. For the first time in the last 20 years I visited Kamchatka, I saw with my sisters. On the way back, he met with Alexander Lebed - he was then the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Many times he spoke to officials and military men, schoolchildren and veterans, told them about Afghanistan, about the activities of our Association of Internationalist Warriors. Under Magadan and in Chechnya, he got into such alterations that he barely carried off his legs.
Over the entire period of his travels, he visited all the former Soviet republics, the Urals, Altai, the Caucasus, the Sayan Mountains, and the Crimea. Alone climbed most of the Kamchatka volcanoes. On Klyuchevskaya Sopka fell under rockfall - he barely survived and got out of there with difficulty. Many times he used to go to the Valley of Geysers. But what has not yet been achieved is to walk around the Urals and the Caucasus Mountains. Hopefully someday.
The main task
- At the end of 1980, I was one of the initiators of the creation of the current Association of Soldiers-Internationalists of the Kaliningrad Region, whose chairman of the board was in 1996 – 1998 and I have been with 2010 of the year. Why do I need it? Then, that before my eyes I still have the guys who died in Afghanistan: sergeants Zlatharius, Baranov, Mamedov, privates Yudin, Wolf, Barkans ... 21 people were killed in my battalion. And in the Kaliningrad region 74 people have not returned from Afghanistan. Society should not forget about them! As well as the veterans, "Afghans". In their area today, more than three and a half thousand.
Our main task is to help veterans and their families, and not only the “Afghans”, but also all the combatants. Frequently asked for help. Someone needs money for drugs, and someone needs funerals. Someone needs a wheelchair, and someone needs a medical examination. We cooperate with other veteran organizations, with a hospital for war veterans, where our club-museum is located, with a regional hospital. They opened a charity fund to commemorate the participants of the wars “Honor and valor”. It is mainly the personal donations of the veterans who feed it ... The business, alas, does not show activity.
Another key task is military-patriotic work with young people. Here we can say that we took the baton from veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Almost every school in the region is assigned one of our employees from district, city and departmental departments. We regularly go to orphanages and teen clubs, participate in various patriotic events, military sports games. We do this, as a rule, on our own initiative.
One of the most noticeable results of our activity is the monument to the international soldiers of the Kaliningrad region who died in local military conflicts. It was built in 1998 year in the central city park of culture and recreation "Youth". At the foot of the monument is the land from the graves of fallen soldiers and a capsule with a message to descendants. On granite plaques - the names of military conflicts that took place in different parts of the world, and the names of Kaliningraders who perished there. Today it is one of the most revered places in the city.
I managed to do something as a deputy of the Kaliningrad Regional Duma, where I was elected in 2011 year. One of the laws I initiated — on increasing benefits for disabled war veterans — has already been adopted, the second on increasing benefits for families of the dead combatants — is being discussed now. Some more bills are under development. We managed to defend two Kaliningrad military factories, which they wanted to close. A lot of people come to the reception. Everyone, to the best of my ability, I try to help.
Recently, Yury Matveyevich Fedorishchev celebrated the 70 anniversary. One of many congratulations I will give in full:
"Neva-16". Comrade Colonel! Please accept my birthday greetings. I wish you all the best, health and good.
1-th company, 2-th platoon. Ildus Kutdusovich Valiullin, Almetyevsk, Tatarstan, senior gunner of the armored personnel carrier that removed your wounded man from the shelling.
Photos of the author and from the personal archive of Yuri Fedorishchev.
In the pictures: Yuri FEDORISHCHEV; with a group of Afghan comrades (Y. FEDORISHCHEV - far right).
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