Soldiers are silent ...

Do you know many veterans who no one has ever interviewed? I'll tell you about one of them. He was my grandfather. Nobody invited to school lessons of courage, he never gave flowers May 9, timurovtsi not remove the snow from his home, not chopped wood and did not bring water to his house was never a red five-pointed star in a white circle to, and he no I never present the award in honor of the anniversary of another victory. You say, "That can not be!" What are you! Like him, thousands and thousands and thousands of thousands. And none of them is not forgotten, but while we have not forgotten ...

If he could, as he had asked me, looking from the black-and-white photos from the visor Budenovka (how many times in my childhood I was holding it in his hands!) With a green star of the border guard that would tell? Probably about the village Andreevskoe that Strelna where Danilov had always lived, and he was one of them - Danilov Vasiliy Fedorovich. (In the photo, participants of the Finnish and the Great Patriotic War: Vasily Danilov Fedorovich (1906-1947), born in der.Andreevskoe Strelenskogo s / s - left Rozhin Vasily (1908-1988), born in der.Mutovino Strelenskogo s / s - right) .

Born in 1906, in 1922 he was the only male left in the family. It was necessary to raise the little sisters and widowed mother to support. All the peasants' concerns were on it. Then - a call to the "real," as used to be called serving in the army. Then work on the farm - in the summer, in logging - in winter. He worked in the felling and the saw-luchkovka and an ax were the main tools and removals by winter road-Ice-boats to the river from the plots in 8-10 km on horseback. Chopping wood and loading - all by hand. As most literate appointed foreman. There was a private family went to children living on lesouchastka in tiny cubicles, fenced in barracks boards. He was an avid hunter grandfather. The fact that the mining in the forest wilderness on their way to and from work: grouse, black grouse, capercaillie, - it was a good tool in the family. All my life I dreamed about a hunting dog, but even had to deny yourself, your dog, too, had to be fed. What is already here, if kids do not have enough bread ... Simple life of the common man in a very harsh time, and what lies ahead - not yet guessed ...

Came 1939 th. The harsh winter of the Finnish War. Front. Gray overcoat and boots Budenovka with windings from the cold did not save. Bread cut with an ax, not the wounded died of his wounds, and more from frost. We slept in huts of pine branches. On the Hills - bare rock, in the lowlands - swamp trench not vyroesh. In the center of the hut maintained by turns fire. To him feet and slept. The attendant watched their feet if that knocks a stick on shoes, "otodvinu, burn!" And in the afternoon advancing with battles or lying in the snow on the defensive. But after the Finnish grandfather did not immediately return home. The best part were transferred to Azerbaijan on the border with Turkey. But finally, in August 1940 Vasiliy Fedorovich returned to his native home. What was the holiday for families, for children, keep in memory the aroma of imported apples and father of the southern white rolls - delicacies in the village unseen! Again, work in the forest. And until a new war has left less than a year.

Time passed quickly, and how many it was - did not have time soldiers wear shoes. On the third day of the war left Vasiliy Fedorovich his home ... The youngest son, the third child in the family, was only 20 days old. Difficult were seeing: an old mother, Maria Pavlovna, fell unconscious, anticipating worst ... of bygone military service, and especially the Finnish war, sent without preparation directly to the front. So it went from Ustyug columns with rifles with fixed bayonets, bedroll with overcoats on their shoulders until the foot-pockets, to the railway station. And Vasily Fedorovich to the same burden was with a rifle on the severity of the incomparable: the first number of machine-gun he carried on his shoulder wrapped in a tarp barrel from the receiver machine gun.

Under the first bombing we were already at the station near the Volga Rybinsk ... And then there were heavy battles at Staraya Russa in the Novgorod land, fighting long 3 year life. And standing there with a 41-year company to death and shelves of the northern towns and villages. German planes were flying, as a scientist, as a job, without encountering any resistance. Bombing without end. If you do not have enough bombs, then on top of our positions flew howling fragments of rails and iron barrel with punched holes.

And even after the war - and the hard work: Thousands of cubic meters of earth dug ditches and trenches, trenches and ditches without end. In winter snow sweeps, autumn and spring floods the water. Short attack, only a few kilometers away, and again all over again. But the Germans on their way to the first battles intoxicated whether schnapps, or light European victories in full growth, without helmets, shirts with rolled up to the elbows, sleeves hung with Schmeisser and pistol - they are experienced fighters Finnish and experienced hunters - quickly learn crawl and run and dig into the ground.

But somehow, a rare veteran will remember and speak now about them, about those middle-aged soldiers who left the family home, children, almost as his boys, and took care of the front of their, youngsters guarded paternal care from bullets, were themselves there, which is more dangerous with the simple words "still have time navoyevat something." How short is our memory, no matter how long was not life ...

And the rewards then the speech was not. For at the end of the war he was given the Order of whole units, if the hero is assigned at the beginning of the war the medal "For Courage" I think, and then not always. Awards, because they only mean the same, and the price they have different ...

In February, the 44th was Vasiliy Fedorovich in an ambush in the neutral zone, came under fire from a machine gun - a pile of metal at the most - seriously wounded in the thigh, a broken leg. 3 days lay bleeding, crawled at night our scouts (who had his own job, and they threatened the tribunal had no right to pull out the wounded, ill time - cruel rule), sometimes chosen by the Germans. Comrade, dragged him into the trench and made a bandage, was captured. A grandfather all lay and hope listening to the rumbling of tank engines - Do not start an offensive? But tankers only warmed up engines.

On the fourth night crawled medics saved ... After a year of hospitals, endless torment. Vasily Fedorovich brought home on a sled in the frosty February 45th with a bandage to a metal foot rail. During the fighting near Staraya Russa was a soldier's grandfather Order of the Red Star, and the second, which was presented as somewhere and get lost ...

My grandfather, Vasily Danilov Fedorovich, was killed in the war, but I have never seen him, he told me nothing could not tell, I'm nothing could ask. He died from the wounds of war and post-war famine in 1947, the year. I was born in 1967.

... And my grandfather probably would have asked me how long I was in Strelna, and now looks like our house. And he heard my answer, that there is no house, not even a village, what would he, frustrated and puzzled, have thought to ask a question yet? Probably so, "What happened? That, again, was a war ?! "

And as much as I could explain it? Maybe an afterthought, added to joy:

 - And on the shores of elm still grows!

 - The same elm? - He looked at me incredulously, suddenly wrong.

 - Yes, yes, the same one! - So here I spoke with confidence. - True, he became very old, withered crone and charred from the winter cold, summer thunderstorms, wind and rain. But the roots, near the once mighty trunk, went shoots, gaining power and dissolving the spring of his broad, velvety leaves from the inside ...

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