"Quail"
Senior medical service Gorbachev Elena Naumovna. 6 May this year she turned 91 year. Short stature. Now, as she says, it is equal to one meter 52 centimeters, and during the war years was even less. The soldiers called her "quail". She began to believe in fate when a soldier was killed on the front line next to her, and she remained unscathed. But, thank God, we can meet her on the quiet Gerasimenko street where she lives now and hear her history.
Everything tells us about the past war. I am going to meet on the street named after Lieutenant General Vasily Gerasimenko, who went through the Civil and Great Patriotic War. He commanded the 28 army that participated in the Battle of Stalingrad.
Suddenly, it seems to me that this goes to meet Elena Naumovna. But no. This is Anna Fedorovna Erokhova. Lives here. During the war, she was 11 years old. She is a living witness to the liberation of Stalingrad. Together with everyone, she joined the labor feat, which would later be called a feat, and then it became commonplace for thousands of Soviet schoolchildren. They weeded wheat and rye fields with their hands, picked weeds in the fields near their village Bereznyagi, and then sent bread to the front. And when the Germans arrived, it became very bad to live. “We were kicked out of the house. We lived in a barn. A cow stood on one side of the barn, and my mother and I stood on the other, ”said Anna Fedorovna. Our house housed a German platoon of machine gunners. Every morning they were lined up in front of the house to read ideological notations. I read the major notations. Our villages were located almost next to the front line. We got a dare! And when our troops won in Stalingrad, the Germans blew away from our house like the wind blew, everything disappeared somewhere. Our came! How many tears were there then! How much happiness was there. We were freed. I remember our two tank. And a performance at one of them sergeant. He said that soon freedom will come to every house, that victory will be soon, the enemy will be defeated. And we believed them to the last drop of our heart. "
But Elena Naumovna is waiting for us, as a military man, she does not like being late, and she has to almost say goodbye to tears with such an occasional, but symbolic passerby.
Elena Naumovna amazes me with her small stature and amazing kindness, which really comes from her all over. This is a kind of universal kindness, which, unfortunately, now in our restless world can disappear irrevocably due to newfangled phenomena.
After school, she wanted to go to medical school. And then - the war. And everything was different. Once, five people in civilian clothes came to their school, and they began to ask the same question to high school students: “What would you like to become?”
- When I was called into the office, four people in turn suggested that I should go to study scout, radio operator. And so four times they called completely different professions that did not suit young Lenochka. And finally, the fifth asked: "Do you like medicine?"
“Of course,” she answered. - I dream of becoming a doctor.
So the dream and the harsh military reality dragged on into one tight knot.
In December 1941, she volunteered to join the Red Army, became the sister of the surgical department in the ancient Georgian city of Dusheti. In February, 1942 of the year was sent to the active army of the Southern Front.
And Elena began to work in the hospital. She saw the first wounded at the field evacuation center, which was located near the railway station. The wounded had to be quickly unloaded and unloaded, bandaged, and pain-relieved injections.
The first time she saw the wounded in the field. Dumbfounded. Field. Screams from everywhere. But they were taught not to get lost, but to clench their will into a fist and assist the wounded. After all, every minute is on the account, and the fate of the wounded depends on the competent action of the sanitary instructor.
In the evacuation center, the young sisters worked and at the same time studied in the courses of nurses. Then the order came, on which they had to be sent to the front line. Finally, they came for Elena Gorbacheva.
“Cadet, they came for you,” 1943 told her in March.
Helen goes out into the street with a knapsack and sees the car and the driver, who blinked in confusion at the sight of such a small nurse. He silently put her in the cockpit, and they went to the front line, to the battalion of machine gunners of the 807 th rifle regiment, 304 th rifle Zhitomir red banner division (second formation).
The episode of the meeting with her future commander, with whom she will go through almost the entire war, Elena Naumovna remembers in the smallest details so far:
- The driver jumped out of the cab. I walked around the car, opened the door, picked me up and put me on the ground. And the commander asked him:
- Where is our medical instructor? What, did not bring?
“I brought it,” the chauffeur replies.
And here I go out.
“Your mother,” says the commander. - I need a healthy man, how will she pull out the wounded?
And I stand. I am silent. The commander goes angry and says: "What should I do with her ?!"
The political officer intervened: "Let us see how it will manifest itself in the first battle, and then we will make a decision."
The first battle was small, short. I remembered that it was impossible to cry, we were taught this, otherwise they would send me to the bath-and-laundry complex. And I began to do everything as we were taught. First of all, she ran to the seriously wounded.
I remember my first wounded. He was wounded in the stomach. She gave him a shot, put a bandage. He, poor, moans, and my soul is torn. But I did not show it. I did not get lost, no.
Then she began to command two soldiers attached to me as assistants so that they could quickly sort the wounded: seriously wounded — one way, lightly wounded — the other. And so I began to do everything quickly: dressings, injections.
In the second battle also quickly sent the wounded to the medical battalion, located two or three kilometers away. We were lucky that the road was not bombed.
The commander then changed his attitude towards me. He saw me working quickly and efficiently. And then they began to praise me: from the medical battalion they call and ask who did the dressings so well that none of the wounded had any complications.
The commander tells me:
“Your appearance is so deceptive.” I did not think that you are so efficient.
In between battles, she taught the fighters to provide first aid, to properly apply dressings.
And then battles, battles, bandaging, wounded went in a continuous stream. Almost a year went by.
Once, during a lull, the commander gathered all the battalion leadership for a small council and asked for an opinion on whom to award. And they all began to say in one voice: “Nurse, nurse”. So it was decided to award Elena Naumovna with the Order of the Red Star. She was 18 years old.
And again - fighting, fighting. “We go all the time, we go,” says Elena Naumovna.
It turned out that nurses cannot be at the front without weapons. Very often young girls began to die: the Germans pretended to be wounded and shot at them. Dali and Elena pistol. Heavy, belt drooped under its weight. And then the commander asked to get for her trophy. And after a while they called her to the commander, they gave her a small pistol, which the intelligence officers obtained from the German general- "language".
And again - fighting, fighting. Already became an experienced, fired fighter, who for small stature and tireless care machine gunners called "quail".
She was awarded the medal "For Military Merit."
And again - battles, battles, heavy battles. Sometimes in the winter there were several kilometers to crawl along the cold ground. And although they dressed warmly - a sweatshirt, wadded trousers, and tightly girdled on top with a belt - it was still cold penetrated everywhere. And what does it mean to lie down to an eighteen-year-old girl on earth in the frost under minus 40 degrees ?!
And again - fighting, fighting.
“I can be proud of the innovation. Before me, no one in the battalion did. At the end of the fighting, we began to check in the trenches and dugouts, whether there were any seriously injured soldiers buried in the ground. For the first time went on such searches. Listened to any rustle. Three dugouts passed. And when they entered the fourth, a muffled moan came from the ground. Lightweight, barely audible. Unearthed. It was a soldier of about forty, stunned and wounded. Helen made him a shot, salaham brought up - he woke up. A soldier was brought to the unit on a stretcher and they took him to the medical battalion by trophy car. Elena Gorbacheva's innovation — after the battle to excavate trenches and dugouts — was then applied everywhere, and was praised for it. The commander called the editorial office of the front-line newspaper and asked him to write an article about Elena. Have written. And they sent a submission for the assignment of the next military rank. Elena put on shoulder straps sergeant.
Did she have to help the German soldiers? She recalled only one case in which the scouts delivered a German officer, a “tongue,” wounded in the thigh. She bandaged him and made an anesthetic injection. A translator came from headquarters, and was incredibly surprised to see such a tiny nurse who fights with soldiers on a par. She offered Elena to transfer to the hospital. But Elena flatly refused. She could not leave her fighters. In general, they often wanted to take her from the front line. Once the members of the military commission, who arrived from Moscow with an inspection of the operating units, were terribly surprised to see a small sprout of a girl. One member of the commission said:
“I'll take you from here and transfer you to the hospital.”
But the commander replied:
- She brings us such great benefits here.
Yeah, and Elena Naumovna herself would never change her battalion. “You know how obstinate I became when I knew that I was right, that it was here that I needed the most. The front forged my character. ”
And she began to believe in her good fortune.
Her overcoat pierced through with a bullet, a medical bag - too. A soldier was killed next to her, and she remained alive.
Somehow the Germans began to fire our positions from long-range guns. Elena, running, hid under the wagon, and the elderly soldier who was sitting next to her — five minutes ago shoving his boots — immediately fell down, struck by a fragment in the neck. To death.
There was another case. Next to Helen stood a soldier, and killed him. “You were born in two shirts,” elderly soldiers told her.
The only time Elena contusilos. She climbed out of the dugout and, sitting on a log, admired the unexpected silence, the sun and the blue sky, when the shelling suddenly began, and she was hit by a wave and hit the ground. Black. Darkness. And only, as if in a fog, from a distance she heard the anxious voices of her comrades. “I'm alive, alive,” she told them. There was blood from her ears, she could hardly hear anything. Sent to the medical battalion. And after three days she was already asking for the front line.
One day, the commander called her to him and said:
- At dawn, we go into battle, take more dressing material.
She prepared everything and reported it to the commander. And he asked: “Maybe you won't go?” It turned out that at dawn they had to take part in the landing on the opposite bank, according to intelligence data, strongly fortified by the Germans.
But she refused outright refused. At about half past two in the morning they came out in a quick order, did not smoke, did not make noise, went quickly. We boarded the boats. The forward detachments reached the left bank safely, and the rest were in trouble: the Germans found them and began shooting at tracer bullets.
“How many caps floated upstairs,” says Elena Naumovna bitterly. - But our soldiers managed to gain a foothold on the other side. Although I had to repel them endless attacks. So many were dead! Approximately 30 percent of their regiment lost. It was such a pain.
But most of all, Elena was struck by the instant death of the commander. Anxiously, she recalls how they, in the run-up to the evening offensive, emerged as part of a small group to explore the terrain. The nurse also needs to know where to place the wounded. When the commander watched a stereo tube, suddenly a single shot rang out. Straight to the head. Blood splashed, dripping down the curtains. And Elena was pressed to the ground - a German sniper was hunting in the area. On this day, they all managed to get out of the dangerous area. And the commander was buried with honors and gave the last volley from machine guns in his honor.
What impressed Elena Naumovna most was the incredible endurance of our soldiers. “It was such an endurance that is incomparable. Ours always walked with such energy, strength, although it was little compared to the Germans. And the Germans could not stand it, threw everything and fled. Sometimes you bandage such a badly wounded man, and he suffers, and even asks for a fight back. Our soldiers showed restraint and will. I learned from them these qualities. Later in life they always helped me in all situations. ”
Their battalion of machine gunners reached Prague. And on Victory Day, everyone fired from all kinds of weapons, kissed, hugged and cried.
How many Yelena Naumovna Gorbachev saved the fighters of the Red Army did not count. After the war, relatives and the soldiers themselves began to search for it: they learned the address through the Central Military Archive. Called, sent parcels. One of the parcels came from Azerbaijan from a rescued Lieutenant Aliyeva (she did not remember the name). And then they called her many times and said: “Thank you, sister, for saving my husband.”
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