The story of a cheerful soldier. Victor Astafiev: Cheerful soldier. To the bright and bitter memory of my daughters Lydia and Irina

Dialogue with a classic

Letter to Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Hello, dear Lev Nikolaevich! I am a big fan of your work, but I would never have thought that someday I would undertake to write these lines. After all, I am a person who reads few classical works and rarely writes letters to anyone. But my desire to write is simply unstoppable, because I want to write to you about the place you and your work occupy not only in my life, but also in the lives of other people who are fond of your works.

First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to you for writing many good works that are known to many people not only in our country, but also far beyond it. You have made a huge contribution, both to Russian literature and to world literature, thereby glorifying Russia and, of course, yourself. Your work has passed through the centuries, and I am sure that it will not lose its relevance in many years. Because in your works there are answers to questions that concern every person.
One example of such works is your most famous work "War and Peace". This epic novel conquered millions of people, and the heroes of this work will forever remain in the hearts of readers. Each hero of this novel is a person with an incredible destiny. Some people are happy to know what mutual love and to be loved, while others know all her worst sides and curse this feeling. When I read this novel, I plunged into another world. In times of chic outfits, balls, courageous deeds, pure and boundless love. Throughout the novel, new sides of the characters are revealed to us, their disputes with each other and the inner search for oneself. You showed it so vividly, emotionally and realistically that, while reading this work, I fell in love, hated, rejoiced and experienced along with the characters. I don’t have exactly one favorite character in this work, because they are all different and unusual, and their problems and actions are so modern that I can say that these are eternal images. Take, for example, Pierre Bezukhov. This novel describes his spiritual quest, his reflections on the meaning of life. Don't people now think about it? Of course! Young people are just as worried about the future, trying to find themselves, their place in life, as they did several centuries ago. They ask questions about love, as Natasha Rostova did, they are worried about the attitude of fathers and children, as Andrei Bolkonsky was worried about. This is what makes the work so relevant, famous, and most importantly - eternal, and you - an amazingly talented writer, because not everyone can describe life in this way, and thereby help to understand oneself. And despite the fact that now the number of people reading has significantly decreased, I am sure that such works as "War and Peace" will help more than one generation find the meaning of life for themselves, learn to think deeply, understand themselves and try to make the world a better place. .
Sincerely, your admirer Natasha Mamchich.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Letter to a revolutionary

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich

Letter to a revolutionary

Lev Tolstoy

Letter to a revolutionary

I have received your interesting letter and am very glad to have the opportunity to answer it.

You say, first, that properly understood egoism is good for everyone, and that this truth, with the destruction of the old order, will quickly enter the consciousness of people. And as soon as the truth enters the consciousness of people, the common good will come. The second is that the human mind can come up with conditions of community life under which the egoism of one person will not harm another. And the third thing is that under these contrived conditions of community life, as you put it, there can also be an element of coercion to a certain extent, i.e. that in order for people to fulfill the requirements of the best device invented by theorists, violence can and should be used.

These three propositions are equally recognized by all scientists, politicians and economists of our time. Scientific theorists, only not as frankly as you, express them. On these three provisions, the reasoning of hundreds, thousands of people who consider themselves the leaders of mankind is based. And yet all three of these propositions are nothing but the most bizarre and baseless superstitions. Not to mention the arbitrariness of the assertion that egoism, i.e. the beginning of discord and disunity can lead to harmony and unity, nor about the strangeness of such a widespread superstition that a small group of people, for the most part not the best, but the worst, can invent the best way of life for millions of people, the very admission of the use of violence to introduce an invented device, while there are hundreds of invented devices that are opposite to one another, already clearly shows the groundlessness of these strange superstitions.

People see the injustice and misery of the condition of the working people, deprived of the opportunity to use the products of their labor, taken from them by a minority of those in power and capitalists, and they invent means of changing and correcting this condition of the vast majority of mankind. And here, in order to change and correct this situation, it is proposed different people various forms of social organization. Some propose a constitutional monarchy with a socialist organization of the workers, there are those who advocate an unlimited monarchy, others propose a republic with various devices: the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Trudoviks, maximalists, syndicalists, still others propose direct legislation of the people, fourth anarchy with a communal system, and many others. etc. Each party, knowing for sure what is needed for the good of the people, says: just give me power, and I will arrange the general well-being. But in spite of the fact that many of these parties were or are even now in power, the promised general well-being is still not satisfied, and the situation of the workers continues to worsen equally. This comes from the fact that the ruling minority, whatever it may be called, an unlimited monarchy, a constitution or a democratic republic, as in France, Switzerland, America, being in power and guided by the selfishness inherent in people, naturally use this power to retain themselves through violence. three benefits that are acquired as to the detriment of the working people. So that in all revolutions and changes of government, only those in power change: others take the place of one, while the position of the working people remains the same "I advise you to read Lozinsky's excellent book, The Results of Parliamentarism. So it was in France, England, Germany, America, so it is now manifested with particular obviousness in Russia. Now the despotic party has gained the upper hand, and it naturally uses all its forces to fight against opposing parties and does not care about improving the condition of the people. If the constitutionalists had the upper hand, it would be the same: they would fight the reactionaries and socialists and in the same way would not care about improving the condition of the people. It would be the same if the top was for the republicans, as it was in France during the Great and all subsequent revolutions, as it happened and is happening everywhere.As soon as a matter is decided by violence, violence cannot stop. The raped become embittered against the rapists and, as soon as they have the opportunity, use all their strength to fight those who raped them. This happens because, when solving a case by violence, the victory always remains not for the best people, but for the more selfish, cunning, shameless and cruel. But people who are selfish, unscrupulous and cruel have no reason to give up in favor of the people the benefits that they have acquired and use. The benefits enjoyed by those in power are always to the detriment of the people. So what hinders the liberation of the people from the oppression and deceit in which they find themselves is not in any way that this or that structure of society is not well thought out in advance, but that this or that device is introduced and supported by violence. And therefore, it would seem natural for people who want to free the people to be concerned not about inventing the best way for the life of a people liberated from enslavement, but to find means of delivering the people from the violence that enslaves them.

What is the violence that enslaves the people, and who produces it? It would seem obvious that a hundred hundred rulers, rulers and rich men, cannot force large millions of workers to submit to them, and that if hundreds rule over millions, then the violence committed against millions of the working people is committed not directly by a handful of those in power, but by the people themselves, who then, by complex, cunning and skillful measures, he is brought to that strange position in which he feels compelled to commit violence against himself. And therefore, it would seem natural for people who want to deliver the people from their enslavement, to investigate first of all the causes of this self-oppression and try to eliminate them. Meanwhile, mountains of books have been written and are being written by Marx, Zhores, Kautsky and other theoreticians about what, according to the historical laws they discover, human society should be like and how it should be organized, about how to eliminate the main, immediate, fundamental cause not only does no one speak of evil, the violence committed by the workers against themselves, but, on the contrary, everyone admits the necessity of that very violence from which the enslavement of the working people results.

So, strange as it may seem to say this, one cannot fail to see that all the mountains of socialist, political, economic writings filled with erudition and intelligence are, in essence, nothing but empty, useless for anything, and moreover, very harmful scriptures, diverting human thought from the natural and reasonable path and directing it to an artificial, false and destructive path. All these scriptures are like what people would do, who would have no other land than land from under the forest, if these people, instead of uprooting this land, would be engaged in reasoning and disputes about what plants to sow and to plant this land when, by itself, according to the proposed historical law, it becomes convenient for arable farming. Scholars think up the best future arrangement for the life of people enslaved by violence, diligently discussing all the details of the future arrangement and arguing with each other passionately about what this future arrangement should be, but not a word is said about that violence, in the presence of which no future arrangement is conceivable. public life, no improvement in the condition of the working people.

To improve the position of the working people, one thing is needed: not a discussion about the future of the organization, but only the liberation of itself from the violence that it, at the will of those in power, inflicts on itself.

How, then, can the people be freed from the violence which, for the sake of the minority, it inflicts upon itself? There can be only one answer: the working people can free themselves from violence only by ceasing to participate in any kind of violence, under any conditions. But how can we ensure that people do not commit violence, do not participate in them for any purpose, under any conditions? There is only one means for this: the means is for people to understand in themselves what they are, and the consequence of this would be to recognize that they must always, under any conditions, and that they must never, under any conditions, do, including any kind of human violence against a person that is incompatible with a person's consciousness of his human dignity.

In order for people to understand what they are, and as a result, would recognize that there are things that they should always do, and those that they should never do under any circumstances, including the violence of a person against a person , you need the very thing that both you and your teachers and leaders deny: you need the appropriate time, i.e. degree of mental development of people, religion.

So that the deliverance of the working people from their oppression and the change of their condition can in no way be achieved by projects of the best organization, and even less by attempts to introduce this organization by force, but only by one thing: by the same thing, which is denied by the guardians of the people, by the affirmation and dissemination in people of such a religious consciousness, in which a person would recognize the impossibility of any violation of unity and respect for one's neighbor, and therefore the moral impossibility of committing any kind of violence against one's neighbor. And such a religious consciousness, excluding the possibility of violence, it would seem, could easily be assimilated and recognized not only by Christians, but by all mankind of our time, if there were not, on the one hand, pseudo-religious superstition, and on the other, an even more harmful pseudo-scientific superstition.

You say that rightly understood selfishness is the good of all, that a person cannot fully enjoy his happiness if society suffers, that the future desirable society should be built on the work and solidarity of all. All this is perfectly just, but this is achieved only by religious feeling, the basis of which is love, and by no means by violence, which alone hinders the establishment of such a society.

In order for the people to be able to free themselves from the violence that they exercise on themselves at the will of those in power, it is necessary that a religion appropriate to the times be established among the people, recognizing the same divine principle in all people and therefore not allowing the possibility of human violence against man. About how the people will arrange themselves when they are freed from violence, they themselves will think, when this liberation is accomplished, and without the help of learned professors, they will find the device that is peculiar to them and necessary. into murder, there is nothing to go far. Overcrowded... 1854 182 S.N. Tolstoy. Cm. letter 35. 183 V.P. Tolstoy. Letter unknown. 184 H.H. Tolstoy in October he wrote: “Masha ...

Astafiev V.P. cheerful soldier

To the bright and bitter memory of my daughters Lydia and Irina.

God! it becomes empty and scary in your world!

N. V. Gogol

Part one

Soldier being treated

On September 14, 1944, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

It happened on the eastern slope of the Dukla Pass, in Poland. The observation post of the artillery battalion, in the control platoon of which, having changed several military professions due to injuries, I fought as a signalman leading edge, was located on the edge of a rather dense and wild pine forest for Europe, flowing down from big mountain to the bald patches of malformed fields, on which only potatoes, beets remained unharvested, and, broken by the wind, corn with already broken cobs dangled in rags with shriveled tatters, in places black and bald burnt out from incendiary bombs and shells.

The mountain near which we stood was so high and steep that the forest thinned to its top, under the very sky the peak was completely bare, the rocks reminded us, since we got into ancient country, the ruins of an old castle, to the hollows and crevices of which the roots of trees clung here and there and fearfully, secretly grew in the shade and wind, faded, crooked, like everything - wind, storms and even themselves - afraid.

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down from below with huge mossy stones, as if squeezed the rim of the mountain, and along this rim, clinging to stones and roots, entangling in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all kinds of woody and herbal dope, hatching out of the stones with a key, ran into the ravine is a river, and the farther it ran, the faster, more full-flowing and more talkative it became.

Across the river, in the near field, half of which had already been emptied and was glowing green with aftermath, sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a haystack that had settled and was touched with black on a deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered with almost drooping potato tops, where sunflowers, where hawkweed, sow thistle, densely littered with tufts.

Having made a sharp turn to the ravine, which was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of dope, which had grown and impassably woven in it. As if mad, the river flew noisily out of the darkness to the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed to the village, which was beyond the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds blown by it.

We could hardly see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a pointed spire of the church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made one more knee and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a dark Siberian farmstead, covered with planks, chopped from thick logs, sprinkled with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses on the backs and vegetable gardens. A lot of things had already burned down there, and something else was languidly and sleepily smoking, causing ashes and tar smoke from there.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village ahead of us still had to be beaten off, how many enemies there were, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat in a good way - no one knew yet.

Our units dug in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, across the river, about two hundred meters away from us, infantry moved in the field and pretended to dig in, in fact, the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate from the belly potatoes. In a wooden farm in the morning, in two voices, announcing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and with a painful groan fell silent. The infantrymen sent patrols there and profited from fresh meat. Ours, too, wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhytomyr region and said that no one in the world would better than him in the world tar a pig with straw, only sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, quite densely and accurately fired two mortars at once and then began to pour from machine guns, and when bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest, hit the trunks, then this already surrenders to continuous fire and a nightmare, the situation has become not only difficult, but also disturbing.

We all immediately earned more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer with a pistol in his hand ran down the slope of the field to the infantry and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung with his boot to one of his subordinates, forcing them to fill the fires. We heard: “Gouging! Razmundyay! Once ... ”, well, and the like, familiar to our brother, if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

We dug in, put an end to communication with the infantry, sent a signalman with the apparatus there. He said that all the uncles here, therefore, swept warriors in the Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having drunk potatoes, sleep in all directions and the company commander was all crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we should be on the alert and in combat readiness.

The cross on the church twinkled like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village was marked by the tops more clearly, cock cries were heard from it, a motley herd of cows and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects over the hills came out into the field. Behind the village, hills turning into hills, then into mountains, further - heavily lying on the ground and with a blue hump resting against the washed-out autumn slurry skies is the same pass that Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, in the imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, go to the side and rear of the enemy and, with the help of a clever maneuver, get a bloodless victory as soon as possible. But having laid on these slopes where we sat now, about a hundred thousand lives, Russian troops Let's go look elsewhere.

Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy that even in this, in "our" war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the "old" generals, again crowded around Dukla Pass, trying to cross it, get into Slovakia and with such a clever, bloodless maneuver to cut off the Nazi troops from the Balkans, withdraw Czechoslovakia from the war and all Balkan countries, and end the exhausted war as soon as possible.

Light and bitter

memory of daughters

my Lydia and Irina.

God! it becomes empty and scary in your world!

N. V. Gogol.

Part one. SOLDIER IS TREATED

On September 14, 1944, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

It happened on the eastern slope of the Dukla Pass, in Poland. The observation post of the artillery battalion, in the control platoon of which I, having changed several military professions due to injuries, fought as a signalman of the front line, was located on the edge of a rather dense and wild pine forest for Europe, flowing down from a large mountain to the bald patches of ugly fields, on which I remained unharvested only potatoes, beetroot, and, broken by the wind, rag dangled with withered tatters of corn with already broken cobs, in places black and bald burnt out from incendiary bombs and shells.

The mountain, near which we stood, was so high and steep that the forest thinned to its top, under the very sky the peak was completely bare, the rocks reminded us, since we got into an ancient country, the ruins of an ancient castle, to the hollows and crevices of which there and here the roots clung to the trees and fearfully, secretly grew in the shade and the wind, starved, crooked, like everything - the wind, storms, and even themselves - afraid.

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down from below with huge mossy stones, as if squeezed the rim of the mountain, and along this rim, clinging to stones and roots, entangling in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all kinds of woody and herbal dope, hatching out of the stones with a key, ran into the ravine is a river, and the farther it ran, the faster, more full-flowing and more talkative it became.

Across the river, in the near field, half of which had already been emptied and was glowing green with aftermath, sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a haystack that had settled and was touched with black on a deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered with almost drooping potato tops, where sunflowers, where hawkweed, sow thistle, densely littered with tufts.

Having made a sharp turn to the ravine, which was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of dope, which had grown and impassably woven in it. As if mad, the river flew noisily out of the darkness to the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed to the village, which was beyond the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds blown by it.

We could hardly see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a pointed spire of the church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made one more knee and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a dark Siberian farmstead, covered with planks, chopped from thick logs, sprinkled with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses on the backs and vegetable gardens. A lot of things had already burned down there, and something else was sluggishly and sleepily smoking, causing ashes and tar smoke from there.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village ahead of us still had to be beaten off, how many enemies there were, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat in a good way - no one knew yet.

Our units dug in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, across the river, two hundred meters away from us, infantry moved in the field and pretended to be digging in, in fact, the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate from the belly potatoes. In a wooden farm in the morning, in two voices, announcing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and with a painful groan fell silent. The infantrymen sent patrols there and profited from fresh meat. Ours also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhytomyr region and said that no one in the world would better than him in the world tar a pig with straw, only sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, quite densely and accurately fired two mortars at once and then began to pour from machine guns, and when bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest, hit the trunks, then this already surrenders to continuous fire and a nightmare, the situation has become not only difficult, but also disturbing.

We all immediately earned more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer with a pistol in his hand ran down the slope of the field to the infantry and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung with his boot to one of his subordinates, forcing them to fill the fires. We heard: “Gouging! Razmundyay! Once ... ”, well, and the like, familiar to our brother, if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

Astafiev V.P. cheerful soldier

To the bright and bitter memory of my daughters Lydia and Irina.

God! it becomes empty and scary in your world!

N. V. Gogol

Part one

Soldier being treated

On September 14, 1944, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

It happened on the eastern slope of the Dukla Pass, in Poland. The observation post of the artillery battalion, in the control platoon of which I, having changed several military professions due to injuries, fought as a signalman of the front line, was located on the edge of a rather dense and wild pine forest for Europe, flowing down from a large mountain to the bald patches of ugly fields, on which I remained unharvested only potatoes, beetroot, and, broken by the wind, rag dangled with withered tatters of corn with already broken cobs, in places black and bald burnt out from incendiary bombs and shells.

The mountain, near which we stood, was so high and steep that the forest thinned to its top, under the very sky the peak was completely bare, the rocks reminded us, since we got into an ancient country, the ruins of an ancient castle, to the hollows and crevices of which there and here the roots clung to the trees and fearfully, secretly grew in the shade and the wind, starved, crooked, like everything - the wind, storms, and even themselves - afraid.

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down from below with huge mossy stones, as if squeezed the rim of the mountain, and along this rim, clinging to stones and roots, entangling in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all kinds of woody and herbal dope, hatching out of the stones with a key, ran into the ravine is a river, and the farther it ran, the faster, more full-flowing and more talkative it became.

Across the river, in the near field, half of which had already been emptied and was glowing green with aftermath, sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a haystack that had settled and was touched with black on a deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered with almost drooping potato tops, where sunflowers, where hawkweed, sow thistle, densely littered with tufts.

Having made a sharp turn to the ravine, which was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of dope, which had grown and impassably woven in it. As if mad, the river flew noisily out of the darkness to the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed to the village, which was beyond the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds blown by it.

We could hardly see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a pointed spire of the church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made one more knee and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a dark Siberian farmstead, covered with planks, chopped from thick logs, sprinkled with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses on the backs and vegetable gardens. A lot of things had already burned down there, and something else was languidly and sleepily smoking, causing ashes and tar smoke from there.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village ahead of us still had to be beaten off, how many enemies there were, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat in a good way - no one knew yet.

Our units dug in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, across the river, about two hundred meters away from us, infantry moved in the field and pretended to dig in, in fact, the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate from the belly potatoes. In a wooden farm in the morning, in two voices, announcing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and with a painful groan fell silent. The infantrymen sent patrols there and profited from fresh meat. Ours, too, wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhytomyr region and said that no one in the world would better than him in the world tar a pig with straw, only sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, quite densely and accurately fired two mortars at once and then began to pour from machine guns, and when bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest, hit the trunks, then this already surrenders to continuous fire and a nightmare, the situation has become not only difficult, but also disturbing.

We all immediately earned more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer with a pistol in his hand ran down the slope of the field to the infantry and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung with his boot to one of his subordinates, forcing them to fill the fires. We heard: “Gouging! Razmundyay! Once ... ”, well, and the like, familiar to our brother, if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

We dug in, put an end to communication with the infantry, sent a signalman with the apparatus there. He said that all the uncles here, therefore, swept warriors in the Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having drunk potatoes, sleep in all directions and the company commander was all crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we should be on the alert and in combat readiness.

The cross on the church twinkled like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village was marked by the tops more clearly, cock cries were heard from it, a motley herd of cows and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects over the hills came out into the field. Behind the village, hills turning into hills, then into mountains, further - heavily lying on the ground and with a blue hump resting against the washed-out autumn slurry skies is the same pass that Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, in the imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, go to the side and rear of the enemy and, with the help of a clever maneuver, get a bloodless victory as soon as possible. But, having laid down about a hundred thousand lives on these slopes, where we were sitting now, the Russian troops went to seek their luck elsewhere.

Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy that even in this, in "our" war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the "old" generals, again crowded around Dukla Pass, trying to cross it, get into Slovakia and with such a clever, bloodless maneuver cut off the Nazi troops from the Balkans, withdraw Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries from the war, and end the exhausted war as soon as possible.

But the Germans also had their own task, and it did not converge with ours, it was of the opposite order: they did not let us go to the pass, they resisted skillfully and staunchly. In the evening, from a village lying behind a hill, they frightened us with mortars. Mines exploded in the trees, since the ditches, cracks and passages of communication were not blocked, showered us with fragments from above - at our and other observation posts, the artillerymen suffered losses, and considerable ones, in such a thin, but, as it turned out, destructive fire. At night, the cracks and ditches were dug into the mowing, in which case you would roll down the mowing from the fragments - and the devil himself is not your brother, the dugouts are covered with logs and earth, the observation cells are disguised. It's hot!

At night, several bonfires lit up ahead of us, a shift company of infantry came and went about its main business - to boil potatoes, but the company did not have time to dig in properly, and in the morning, just from the village they shot, crackled, the Germans ran up the hill with a hubbub in a scattering of Germans, ours like a cow with a tongue licked. The infantry, gorged on potatoes, rattling their bowlers, jogged baggy into the ravine, not irritating the enemy with return fire. Some bow-legged commander yelled, fired his pistol upwards and fired several times at the scuttlers, then caught up with one, another fighter, grabbed them by the collar of their overcoat, then one by one, then two at once knocked to the ground, kicked. But, after lying down for a while, waiting for the frantic commander to roll off to the side, the soldiers ran further or clumsily, but quickly crawled into the bushes, into the ravine.

These fighting warriors were called "Westerners" - it was through the villages of Western Ukraine that they scraped them, shaved them, taught them a little and shoved them to the front.