Troop search engines "Demyansk" Bashny.Net

Report dedicated to Victory Day is a well-known Internet journalist with LJ shnym nickname drugoi
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The story of the search engine unit "Demyansk" certainly need to start with a portrait of the organizer and permanent detachment commander Anatoly Stepanovich Pavlov. Or just Stepanych, as it is called in the squad. Native Demyansk, former editor of the local newspaper, the journalist Pavlov began studying historical research and a search operation in the field of fighting under Demyansk about thirty years ago. In 1988, he gathered a group of the same enthusiastic quest for those killed during the Great Patriotic War and joined her in the Novgorod regional organization "search expedition" Valley ", starting out from the excavations and prospecting in the area of ​​the infamous Meat boron near Leningrad.

Since Demyansk squad searchers found and buried with military honors more than nine thousand Red Army soldiers. Force detachment in Demyansk installed several military monuments made from the remnants of the weapons, which can not find during the search operations. Every spring and autumn squad going to the "Memory Watch" - a two-week excavation at various places Demyansk area. This year's squad is made up of thirty people - locals and visitors from various parts of Russia. People share their holidays in two, and spend them in the field, in tents, in the open air in rain and snow, doing their noble work to find a nameless soldier, still lying in the fields and woods near Demyansk.

Demyansk searchers spend their own money for the purchase of special equipment and machinery. Quite a bit of help administration of the Novgorod region - this year "Demyansk" allocated 200 liters of diesel fuel, the same liters of gasoline and 30 rubles, "daily" per person. Two weeks in the spring and in the winter - is a necessary program. In fact, the squad is going more often, and sometimes in the winter months when it is possible to get some new information and send it to check. Regularly conducted outreach in the archives are searched for old maps, aerial shots up, which allows to determine the location of a military unit. Detachment working real professionals, great connoisseurs of military history, people with extensive experience job search engine, men have passed through fire and water, current and former military, "Afghans", police officers, businessmen, teachers, university professors - who just do not deal with this hard work.

Six years in the group comes my friend Bear, is the chronicle of a search operation, photographed and participated in the excavations. This year, I asked him to take me with him to Demyansk and called for the company press photographer Dima Kostyukova AFP. With us he went to an employee of the Ministry of Defence of Olga, which is engaged in publishing work in the department. Train Moscow - Pskov have dropped dead of night at a small station Lychkovo, we met the guys search engines and took to his base camp. There we spent three nights and three days that I probably will never forget.





Every morning in the camp begins with a formation, analysis of yesterday's work and jobs to date.
This time the squad is looking at three locations: in the village of White Wood, where two and a half years of fierce fighting; in the woods near the railway, the marsh where our paratroopers are killed during the attack on this line and in the same place, near the village of Pochinok, where "demyantsy" found the remains of two hundred soldiers of the Red Army.

Mending searchers Stepanych only explored and mapped the place, and the excavation and exhumation given into the hands of children from Elektrostal Center of patriotic education.



I will start to show the work of the second day of our stay in the camp.
At this time of the searchers went into the woods near the railroad, where are our paratroopers.
We plunged into the dusty box "Ural" and went to the place.



From the place where we disembarked, we need to plot the forest had to go for about one and a half kilometers on the sidelines "glands".



When the train passes, we go down the embankment and wait. Alex holds one of our sobachentsy.



Free search - the most difficult and time-consuming part of the job.
Group variance alone, with metal detectors and shovels in their hands.
The remains of these marshes are shallow, but they must be sought, over and over again digging the pit, where "link" iron.

Max and Ivan and Volodya found the fighter - dug up a skull with a bullet hole in a benevolent, some limbs, helmet, grenades "pineapples.
I think that at this point the fire he was alone, but half an hour later - a new discovery: the upper part of the skull of another. Steel bail, hoping to find a locket.



At Basil in hand - the German boots.
During the war, there was no forest was marshy field where the attacking line of the railway, our paratroopers dug in, creating a chain of firing cells.



Here the forest littered with rusty helmets, sapper shovels, ammunition.
In the fifties in these places we worked trofeyschiki collected metal.
Then he searched for nonferrous locals. Everything has been dug and rummaged, but the task "demyantsev" find the remains of fighters.
To do this, they are here and walk for hours, picking swampy soil in hopes of finding the soldiers.



Every two hours, the search engines coming back to the edge of the forest, bring with them found, resting.



Here, together with Volodya digs walk - Methodist University of Kazan.
Her grandfather died here and it is the first time this year, joined the group "Demyansk."



Evening in the base camp people are going around the field kitchen, sit together at a large table, dinner.
Camp on the bank of the river, and from it shall be damp and cold.



Happy guys have found shelter in the "black diggers" to hide there with a bag of rusty German bullets.
It was decided to destroy them.
Max made a fire in a gully at a distance. Balance dinner held under the flapping of exploding ammunition.



On the morning of the first day we sat on the patching-perelatany tracked vehicles belonging to the detachment, and have moved on to the village of Pochinok gully, where a few days earlier Stepanych searchers found buried in the trench with its soldiers of the Red Army.
According to the recollections of local residents there was a fierce battle, and is presumed to be Germans after the occupation of the village, as usual, they were ordered to collect the bodies of the local Red Army, put them into the trench, and scatter the ground.
What was done. There is a theory that these soldiers were surrounded by swamp and died there of typhus and starvation.



The spectacle is not easy - in a long narrow trench lie dozens of skeletons (later estimated - in this place found the remains of 221 Red Army).



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There are young guys from Moscow Elektostali.
One of them showed us the remains of bast - at two of the Red Army was on their feet wicker shoes.



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Blank medallion and buttons on the shirt.



In several hours the guys sitting in the trench, carefully excavating the remains of Red Army soldiers.
We work on all the archaeological rules, there are so-called garrison "Open list" for the right to carry out excavations, the process monitors the police and the FSB.



Next to him lay a soldier purse with small change.



In this pit found the remains of two hundred and twenty of the Red Army. They were found three medallions, all empty.
Tomorrow all found lay the separate and ignite around each of the big candles
- Searchers have adopted a ritual before the soldiers buried in the cemetery in fraternal Demyansk.



Where is found buried, you ask in the comments to the previous record. I will show you now.



Here, on the outskirts of Demyansk Anatoly Stepanovich associates arranged memorial military cemetery, where a detachment of Red Army soldiers found and brings solemnly buries.



The men of the squad do everything themselves, including and monuments. They are unsightly, but are made from the heart and very touching.



The "Demyansk" tradition - when they come here, be sure to pour vodka in circles standing at the monument.



At the grave of a downed pilot IL-2 - found at the scene of the crash bronespinka.



In the evening at home, Anatoly Stepanovich showed us a unique document - a notebook of its namesake, the pilot Pavlova, who also flew on the attack aircraft.
Pavlov made fifty combat missions, managed to shoot down three enemy planes.
In the notebook recorded their departures, the death of comrades, wrote the lyrics. He died February 19, 1943



As we walked, looked at the military cemetery monuments, Vasili sat down at one of the mass graves.
Three years ago, he thoroughly after working with archival documents, figured the place, killing twelve soldiers 916 th Regiment.
Among them was the elder brother Vasya's father. The boys dug all and now they are here, under the birches.



Here's what a cemetery for German soldiers on Russian soil in Korpovo, on the border of three districts of the Novgorod region.



The cemetery was built with the money of the German state, it is maintained in perfect order.



Police Captain Vladimir, who brought us here in his «Audi»,
I looked at the long lists of names neat covering granite stele near the cross, and said evil - our little stuffed their little ...



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When the guys from the search group "Demyansk" are the remains of German soldiers, they bring them here.



On the last day we went with the guys in the field near the village of White Wood.
As they say, two and a half years of fighting White Wood passed from hand of the Germans in our hands and back 150 times.
Huge field next to the already non-existent outskirts of the former big four streets of the village, it was drained twice, and here we have to look at a decent depth, with powerful metal detectors, used excavator.
Moreover, each dug a pit should be covered with soil - local mow grass on the field and asked searchers holes do not leave behind.

Dimka took the spade, dug a hole and then found a helmet.



David and Olga put forward to the place of the search. A couple of years ago, David has found in this field a bunker with a machine-gun position.
The man who knows the local war of all or almost all.
Any little thing that is pulled from the ground, can immediately identify - from which it what type of weapons and ammunition.
However, the same knowledge of the majority of search engines "Demyansk." You wonder their erudition in this field.



The result of the day in the field - two soldiers and a few fragments of personal weapons.

For this watch detachment searchers "Demyansk" found more than 350 soldiers of the Red Army. The work continues.



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