Alekseevich is not feminine in war. With

When was the first time in history that women appeared in the army?

- Already in the IV century BC, women fought in the Greek troops in Athens and Sparta. Later they participated in the campaigns of Alexander the Great.

The Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote about our ancestors: “Slav women sometimes went to war with their fathers and spouses without fear of death: thus, during the siege of Constantinople in 626, the Greeks found many female corpses among the killed Slavs. Mother, raising children, prepared them to be warriors.

- And in the new time?

- For the first time - in England in the 1560-1650s they began to form hospitals in which female soldiers served.

What happened in the 20th century?

- The beginning of the century ... In the First World War in England, women were already taken to the Royal Air Force, the Royal Auxiliary Corps and the Women's Legion of Motor Transport were formed - in the amount of 100 thousand people.

In Russia, Germany, France, many women also began to serve in military hospitals and hospital trains.

And during World War II, the world witnessed a female phenomenon. Women served in all branches of the armed forces already in many countries of the world: in the British army - 225 thousand, in the American - 450-500 thousand, in the German - 500 thousand ...

About a million women fought in the Soviet army. They mastered all military specialties, including the most "male" ones. There was even a language problem: the words “tanker”, “infantryman”, “submachine gunner” did not have a feminine gender until that time, because this work had never been done by a woman. Women's words were born there, in the war ...

From a conversation with a historian

Man is more than war
(from the book's diary)

Millions killed cheaply

Trampled a path in the dark...

Osip Mandelstam

1978-1985

I'm writing a book about the war...

I, who did not like to read military books, although in my childhood and youth it was everyone's favorite reading. All my peers. And this is not surprising - we were children of the Victory. Children of the winners. The first thing I remember about the war? His childhood longing among incomprehensible and frightening words. The war was always remembered: at school and at home, at weddings and christenings, on holidays and at wakes. Even in children's conversations. A neighbor boy once asked me: “What are these people doing underground? After the war, there are more of them than on earth.” We also wanted to unravel the mystery of the war.

Then I thought about death ... And I never stopped thinking about it, for me it became the main secret of life.

Everything for us led from that terrible and mysterious world. In our family, the Ukrainian grandfather, my mother's father, died at the front, was buried somewhere in the Hungarian land, and the Belarusian grandmother, my father's mother, died of typhus in the partisans, her two sons served in the army and went missing in the first months of the war, from three returned one. My father. It was like that in every house. Everyone has. It was impossible not to think about death. There were shadows everywhere...

The village boys played "Germans" and "Russians" for a long time. German words were shouting: “Hyundai hoch!”, “Tsuryuk”, “Hitler kaput!”.

We did not know a world without war, the world of war was the only world we knew, and the people of war were the only people we knew. Even now I do not know another world and other people. Have they ever been?

* * *

The village of my childhood after the war was female. Babia. I don't remember male voices. This is how it remained with me: women talk about the war. They cry. They sing like they cry.

The school library contains half of the books about the war. Both in the countryside and in the regional center, where my father often went for books. Now I have an answer - why. Is it by chance? We were always at war or preparing for war. They remembered how they fought. We have never lived differently, probably, and we do not know how. We can’t imagine how to live differently, we will have to learn this for a long time someday.

In school we were taught to love death. We wrote essays about how we would like to die in the name of ... We dreamed ...

For a long time I was a bookish person, who was frightened and attracted by reality. From ignorance of life appeared fearlessness. Now I think: if I were a more real person, could I rush into such an abyss? From what all this was - from ignorance? Or from a sense of the way? After all, there is a sense of the way ...

I have been looking for a long time ... What words can convey what I hear? I was looking for a genre that would correspond to the way I see the world, how my eye, my ear works.

Once the book “I am from a fiery village” by A. Adamovich, Ya. Bryl, V. Kolesnik fell into the hands. I experienced such a shock only once, while reading Dostoevsky. And here - an unusual form: the novel is assembled from the voices of life itself. From what I heard as a child, from what is now heard on the street, at home, in a cafe, in a trolley bus. So! The circle is closed. I found what I was looking for. I had a presentiment.

Ales Adamovich became my teacher...

* * *

For two years, I didn’t so much meet and record as I thought. Read. What will my book be about? Well, another book about the war... Why? There have already been thousands of wars - small and large, known and unknown. And more has been written about them. But... Men also wrote about men - it became clear right away. Everything we know about the war is known from the "male voice". We are all captive to "male" ideas and "male" feelings of war. "Male" words. And the women are silent. Nobody but me asked my grandmother. My mom. Even those who were at the front are silent. If they suddenly start talking, then they tell not their own war, but someone else's. Another. Adapt to the male canon. And only at home or when they cry in the circle of front-line girlfriends, they remember the war (I heard it more than once in my journalistic trips), which is completely unfamiliar to me. As in childhood, I am shocked. In their stories, a monstrous grin of the mysterious is visible ... When women speak, they do not have or almost do not have what we are used to reading and hearing about: how some people heroically killed others and won. Or lost. What was the technique - what generals. Women's stories are different and about something else. The "women's" war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting and its own space of feelings. Your words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are just people who are engaged in inhuman human deeds. And not only they (people!) suffer there, but also the earth, and birds, and trees. All who live with us on earth. They suffer without words, which is even worse...

But why? I asked myself more than once. - Why, having defended and taken their place in the once absolutely male world, women did not defend their history? Your words and your feelings? They didn't believe themselves. The whole world is hidden from us. Their war remained unknown...

I want to write the history of this war. Women's history.

* * *

From the first entries...

Surprise: these women have military professions - a medical officer, a sniper, a machine gunner, an anti-aircraft gun commander, a sapper, and now they are accountants, laboratory assistants, guides, teachers ... Mismatch of roles - here and there. They talk as if not about themselves, but about some other girls. Today they surprise themselves. And before my very eyes, history “humanizes” and becomes like ordinary life. Another light appears.

There are amazing storytellers, they have pages in their lives that can compete with the best pages of the classics. So that a person can see himself so clearly from above - from the sky, and from below - from the earth. Passed the way up and the way down - from the angel to the beast. Memories are not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a vanished reality, but a rebirth of the past when time turns back. First of all, it is creativity. By telling, people create, "write" their lives. It happens that they “add” and “rewrite”. Here you have to be alert. On guard. At the same time, any falsehood gradually self-destructs, does not withstand the neighborhood of such naked truth. This virus does not survive here. Temperature too high! Sincere, as I have already noticed, ordinary people behave - nurses, cooks, laundresses ... They, how to define it more precisely, get words out of themselves, and not from newspapers and read books. From someone else. But only from their own suffering and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, oddly enough, are often more subject to processing by time. His general encryption. Infected with other people's knowledge. Common spirit. Often you have to walk for a long time, in different circles, in order to hear a story about a “female” war, and not about a “male” one: how they retreated, how they advanced, on which sector of the front ... It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. Like a persistent portrait painter.

I sit for a long time in an unfamiliar house or apartment, sometimes all day long. We drink tea, try on recently bought blouses, discuss hairstyles and culinary recipes. We look at photos of grandchildren together. And then... After some time, you will never know when and why, suddenly that long-awaited moment comes when a person departs from the canon - plaster and reinforced concrete - like our monuments, and goes to himself. Into yourself. He begins to remember not the war, but his youth. A piece of my life ... We must catch this moment. Don't miss! But often after a long day filled with words and facts, only one phrase remains in memory (but what a phrase!): “I went to the front so little that I even grew up during the war.” I leave it in my notebook, although dozens of meters are wound on the tape recorder. Four or five cassettes...

What helps me? It helps that we are used to living together. Together. Cathedral people. Everything in our world is both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and talk about suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and awkward life. For us, pain is art. I must admit, women boldly embark on this journey ...

* * *

How do they greet me?

My name is: “girl”, “daughter”, “baby”, probably, if I were from their generation, they would behave differently with me. Calm and equal. Without the joy and amazement that the meeting of youth and old age gives. This is a very important point, that then they were young, and now they remember the old ones. Through life they remember - through forty years. They carefully open their world to me, they spare me: “I’m sorry that I was there ... That I saw it ... I got married after the war. She hid behind her husband. She hid herself. And my mother asked: “Shut up! Shut up!! Don't confess." I fulfilled my duty to the Motherland, but I am sad that I was there. What do I know... And you are just a girl. I feel sorry for you…” I often see how they sit and listen to themselves. To the sound of your soul. Compare it with words. With long years, a person understands that there was a life, and now we must come to terms and prepare for departure. I don’t want to and it’s a shame to disappear just like that. Carelessly. On the run. And when he looks back, there is a desire in him not only to tell about his own, but also to reach the secret of life. Answer the question for yourself: why did this happen to him? He looks at everything with a slightly parting and sad look... Almost from there... There is no need to deceive and be deceived. It is already clear to him that without the thought of death, nothing can be seen in a person. Its secret exists above everything.

War is too intimate an experience. And as infinite as human life...

Once a woman (pilot) refused to meet with me. She explained on the phone: “I can’t ... I don’t want to remember. I was in the war for three years ... And for three years I did not feel like a woman. My body is dead. There was no menstruation, almost no female desires. And I was beautiful ... When my future husband proposed to me ... It was already in Berlin, at the Reichstag ... He said: “The war is over. We stayed alive. We were lucky. Marry me". I wanted to cry. scream. Hit him! How is it married? Now? In the midst of all this, getting married? Among black soot and black bricks... Look at me... Look at me! You first make a woman out of me: give flowers, take care, say beautiful words. I want it so much! So I'm waiting! I almost hit him... I wanted to hit him... And he had a burned, crimson one cheek, and I see: he understood everything, he had tears flowing down that cheek. For still fresh scars ... And I myself do not believe what I say: “Yes, I will marry you.”

But I can't tell. There is no strength ... It is necessary to live everything again ... "

I understood her. But this is also a page or half a page of the book that I am writing.

Texts, texts. Texts are everywhere. In apartments and country houses, on the street and on the train... I listen... More and more I turn into one big ear, all the time turned to the other person. I "read" the voice...

* * *

Man is more than war...

It is remembered exactly where it is more. They are led there by something that is stronger than history. I need to take a wider view - to write the truth about life and death in general, and not just the truth about the war. Ask Dostoevsky's question: how many people are there in a person, and how can you protect this person in yourself? Undoubtedly, evil is seductive. It is more than good. More attractive. Deeper and deeper I plunge into the endless world of war, everything else has slightly faded, it has become more ordinary than usual. A grandiose and predatory world. Now I understand the loneliness of a person who has returned from there. As from another planet or from the other world. He has knowledge that others do not have, and it can only be obtained there, near death. When he tries to put something into words, he has a sense of disaster. The person is dumb. He wants to tell, the rest would like to understand, but everyone is powerless.

In the most terrible war of the 20th century, a woman had to become a soldier. She not only rescued and bandaged the wounded, but also fired from a "sniper", bombed, undermined bridges, went on reconnaissance, took language.

The woman killed. She killed the enemy, who fell with unprecedented cruelty on her land, on her house, on her children. “It’s not a woman’s lot to kill,” one of the heroines of this book will say, accommodating here all the horror and all the cruel necessity of what happened. Another will sign on the walls of the defeated Reichstag: "I, Sofya Kuntsevich, came to Berlin to kill the war." That was the greatest sacrifice they made on the altar of Victory. And an immortal feat, the full depth of which we comprehend over the years of peaceful life.

For four agonizing years I have been walking burnt kilometers of someone else's pain and memory. Hundreds of stories of women front-line soldiers were recorded: doctors, signalmen, sappers, pilots, snipers, shooters, anti-aircraft gunners, political workers, cavalrymen, tankers, paratroopers, sailors, traffic controllers, drivers, ordinary field bath and laundry detachments, cooks, bakers, testimonies of partisans and underground workers. “There is hardly at least one military specialty that our brave women would not have coped with as well as their brothers, husbands, fathers,” wrote Marshal of the Soviet Union A.I. Eremenko. Among the girls there were Komsomol members of the tank battalion, and heavy tank drivers, and in the infantry - machine-gun company commanders, submachine gunners, although in our language the words "tanker", "infantryman", "machine gunner" do not have a feminine gender, because this job never done by a woman.

Only on the mobilization of the Lenin Komsomol, about 500 thousand girls were sent to the army, of which 200 thousand were Komsomol members. Seventy percent of all the girls sent by the Komsomol were in the active army. In total, over 800,000 women served at the front during the war years in various branches of the military.

The partisan movement became popular. “Only in Belarus, there were about 60 thousand courageous Soviet patriots in partisan detachments.” Every fourth person on Belarusian soil was burned or killed by the Nazis.

Those are the numbers. We know them. And behind them are destinies, whole lives turned upside down, twisted by war: the loss of loved ones, lost health, female loneliness, the unbearable memory of the war years. We know less about this.

“My friend and I went to the cinema, we have been friends with her for forty years now, we were underground together during the war. We wanted to get tickets, but the queue was long. She just had a certificate of a participant in the Great Patriotic War with her, and she went to the cash register and showed it. And some girl, about fourteen years old, probably says: “Did you women fight? It would be interesting to know for what such feats you were given these certificates?

It just so happens that our memory of the war and all our ideas about the war are masculine. This is understandable: it was mostly men who fought, but this is also an acknowledgment of our incomplete knowledge of the war. Although hundreds of books have been written about women who participated in the Great Patriotic War, there is considerable memoir literature, and it convinces us that we are dealing with a historical phenomenon. Never before in the history of mankind have so many women participated in war. In the past, there were legendary units, like the cavalry girl Nadezhda Durova, the partisan Vasilisa Kozhana, during the civil war there were women in the ranks of the Red Army, but mostly sisters of mercy and doctors. The Great Patriotic War gave the world an example of the mass participation of Soviet women in the defense of their Fatherland.

They went because "we and the motherland - for us it was one and the same" ( Tikhonovich K.S. anti-aircraft gunner). They were allowed to go to the front, because it was thrown on the scales of history: to be or not to be a people, a country? That was the question.

They are still alive - participants in the fighting. But human life is not infinite; only memory, which alone conquers time, can prolong it. People who endured the great war, who won it, realize today the significance of what they have done and experienced. They are ready to help us. I have often come across in families thin student and thick common notebooks, written and left for children and grandchildren. This grandfather's or grandmother's inheritance was reluctantly passed into the wrong hands, usually justified in the same way: "We want the children to have a memory.", "I'll make a copy for you, and keep the originals for my son."

Here is one of them sitting in front of me, telling how, just before the war, her mother would not let her go to her grandmother without an escort, they say, she was still small, and two months later this “little one” went to the front. She became a medical instructor, fought from Smolensk to Prague. She returned home at the age of twenty-two, her peers were still girls, and she was already an old man, who had seen a lot and felt a lot: she was wounded three times, one severely wounded in the chest area, she was shell-shocked twice, after the second concussion, when she was dug out of filled trench, turned gray. But it was necessary to start a woman's life: again learn to wear a light dress, shoes, get married, give birth to a child.

From a letter Tamara Ivanovna Kuraeva from the Crimean village of Frunzenskoye:
“When I start talking about the war, I immediately want to stop talking, I immediately want to forget. We learned something that it would be better for us never to know, without this knowledge it would be easier to give birth to children and believe in their happiness. And now my heart shrinks so much when you read newspapers, when you watch the Vremya program.

Even when it's a movie, I still can't calmly hear the whistle of bombs and shells. Because I saw people die. And when I read now that somewhere there is a war, that somewhere people are being killed again, I want to shout at the top of my voice and to the whole world: “No! Not! This should not be.“ Why, then, did we suffer? Why did such young guys die in the spring? I remember that in the spring, especially when the gardens were in bloom, it was the hardest thing to lose people.

For two and a half years I was at the front, I was a military nurse in an evacuation hospital. Thousands of dressings made my hands, gave blood, cried when they died. I will give just one example of how we got tired. Once I went to bandage a scarf: I tied it up, leaned against the window frame and forgot. I woke up and feel refreshed. The doctor meets me and starts scolding me. I do not understand anything; only when he left, but before that he gave me three outfits out of turn, my partner explained what was the matter: I was absent for more than an hour. Turns out I fell asleep.

It is no coincidence that now there is little health, bad nerves. And when they ask: “What are your awards,” I am embarrassed to admit that I have no awards, that they did not have time to award me. And, perhaps, because they did not have time, because there were many of us at the war and each conscientiously did the work he inherited in the war. Could everyone be rewarded? We have an award - May 9th.

During the war years, I did not remember a single holiday. I don't even remember the New Year - neither the forty-first, nor the forty-second, nor the forty-third, nor the forty-fourth. I only remember the forty-fifth.”

“I learned how to shoot, throw grenades… lay mines. Provide first aid...

But in four years... During the war, I forgot all the rules of grammar. the entire school curriculum. I could make out the machine gun with my eyes closed, but when I entered the institute, I wrote the essay with childish mistakes and almost no commas. My military awards saved me - they accepted me to the institute. I wanted to study. I read books and I don't understand, I read poetry and I don't understand. I forgot those words...

At night, nightmares haunted: SS men, barking dogs, last screams ... When dying, a person often whispers something, it is more terrible than a scream. Everything came back to me... A man is being led to execution... There is fear in his eyes... And it is clear that he does not believe, does not believe until the last minute. And curiosity too, and there is curiosity. He stands in front of the machine gun and at the last minute closes it with his hands. It covers my face… In the morning my head was swollen from screaming….

During the war, I did not think, but then I began to think. Scroll... All this was repeated and repeated... I did not sleep... The doctors forbade me to study. But the girls - roommates in the hostel - said to forget about the doctors, and established patronage over me. Every evening they took turns dragging me to the movies, to the comedy. “You must learn to laugh. Laugh a lot." Wanted or not - dragged. There were few comedies, and I watched each one a hundred times, a hundred times at least. At first I laughed and cried...
But the nightmares are gone. I was able to learn…”
Tamara Ustinovna Vorobeikova, underground worker

Are you asking about love? I'm not afraid to tell the truth ... I was a "page", what stands for - field wife. Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander... I didn't love him. He was a good man, but I didn't like him. And I went to him in a dugout a few months later. Where to go? There are only men around, so it's better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. In battle, it was not as scary as after the battle, especially when we had a rest, we would retreat to re-form. How they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Sister!“, and after the battle, everyone guards you ...

You can’t get out of the dugout at night ... Did the other girls tell you this or didn’t they admit it? We were ashamed, I think ... They kept silent. Proud! But it was all there ... Because I didn’t want to die ... It was a shame to die when you were young ... Well, it’s hard for men four years without women ...

There were no brothels in our army, and no pills were given. Somewhere, maybe they were following it. We do not have. Four years... The commanders could only afford something, but the ordinary soldier could not. Discipline. But they keep silent about it… Not accepted… No… For example, I was in the battalion with one woman, she lived in a common dugout. Together with men.

They gave me a place, but what a separate place it is, the whole dugout is six meters. I woke up at night because I waved my hands - then one lady on the cheeks, on the hands, then the other. I was wounded, ended up in the hospital and waved my arms there. The nanny will wake you up at night: “What are you doing?” Who will you tell?”

Vera Maksimovna Berestova, medical lieutenant:
“From the first to the last day I was at the front. In the forty-first she left the encirclement, in the forty-second she participated in the Izyum-Barvenkovskaya operation, then from the first to the last day she transported the wounded from Stalingrad under fire and bombing on barges, on boats, on thin ice on dogs. She finished her military career in Koenigsberg. She was wounded, once drowned in the Volga. She swam out and even pulled out the wounded. But after being under the ice, she could not have children.

The war was over, it was necessary to build a life, to build a country. She went to Siberia and near Irkutsk, from scratch, built the wonderful city of Angarsk. Now there are already about three hundred thousand people in it, and when I arrived, there were two tents. My husband and I raised a stepson, and then we brought two little girls, post-war orphans, from an orphanage. Now they are adults, they have received all the education. We already have five grandchildren. I am all a mother and a grandmother.

And how can a person have one heart for hatred, the second - for love? The woman had one heart.

The Minsker also remembers this Tamara Stepanovna Umnyagina. About this and much more. Small, all so "homely" and at the same time not a person, but an open nerve. With her poetic, very sensitive nature, it was even more difficult for her than for others. Maybe that's why there is no feeling of remoteness from the past, remembering, he repeats all the time: "From this picture today you can go crazy." Two or three years of war passed, and many women were not surprised by terrible things, but she could not get used to it and still cannot. I already knew and heard a lot from them - both poetic and terrible, but I can’t forget the way she tells. It was one of the rare storytellers.

Tamara Stepanovna Umnyagina, guard junior sergeant, medical instructor:
“I remember that I ran to the draft board: I have a skirt made of matting, rubber white slippers on my feet, they are like shoes, with a clasp, it was fashion from fashion. Here I have this skirt, slippers - I asked for the front, they sent me. I came to the unit, this is a rifle division, it stood near Minsk, and they tell me that it’s not necessary, they say, it’s a shame for men that seventeen-year-old girls will fight. And in such a spirit that we will soon defeat the enemy, go, girl, to your mother. Of course, I was upset that they did not take me to the war. And what am I doing? I get to the chief of staff, and he has the colonel who refused me, and I say: “Comrade chief is even higher, let me disobey comrade colonel. I won't go home anyway, I'll retreat with you. Wherever I go, the Germans are close.” That's what everyone called me later: "Comrade chief is even higher." It was the seventh day of the war. We began to retreat.

Soon they were washed with blood. There were a lot of wounded, but they were so quiet, they endured so much, they didn’t want to live like that. No one believed that the war would be so long, they waited: it was about to end. I remember everything was saturated with blood - before, before, before. My slippers were torn, I was already walking barefoot. What did I see? A station is being bombed near Mogilev. And there is a team with children. They began to be thrown out the windows of the cars, small children - three or four years old. There is a forest nearby, so they run into that forest. Tanks immediately went, and the tanks went after the children. There is nothing left of these children. From this picture and today you can go crazy.

Then our unit was surrounded. I have so many wounded, and not one car does not want to stop. Then one wounded lieutenant gives me his pistol: “Can you shoot?” How can I? I only see how they shoot. But I took the gun and went to the road to stop the cars. There for the first time I cursed. We cannot take the wounded on our hands. He asks: “Guys, finish it off. Don't leave us like this."

But the worst was ahead, the worst was Stalingrad. What is the battlefield there? This is a city - streets, houses, cellars. Try to get the wounded out of there! My body was a complete bruise. And my pants are covered in blood. The foreman tells us: “Girls, there are no more trousers, and don’t ask.” And our trousers are all covered in blood, they dry up and stand, they don’t stand as much from starch as from blood, you can cut yourself. There is no clean speck, there is nothing to hand over in the spring. Everything burned, on the Volga, for example, even water burned. Even in winter, the river did not freeze, but burned. Everything was on fire. There was not a single gram of earth in Stalingrad that was not saturated with human blood.

After the war, for several years I could not get rid of the smell of blood, it haunted me for a long, long time. I will wash the linen - I hear this smell, I will cook dinner - I hear it again. Someone gave me a red blouse, and at the same time it was such a rarity, there was not enough material, but I could not wear it. What's on the red. This is the color I couldn't get. I couldn't go to the shops in the meat departments. My husband went for meat. And in the summer I could not stay in the city at all, I tried to leave at least somewhere. As soon as summer, it seems to me that the war will begin now. When the sun heated everything: trees, houses, asphalt, everything had a smell, everything smelled of blood to me. No matter what I ate or drank, I could not get rid of that smell!

I even put clean linen on the bed, but it smells like blood to me.

May days of the forty-fifth. I remember that we took a lot of pictures. They were very happy. On the ninth of May - everyone shouts: “Victory! Victory!" I don't believe it. What to do now? How did it end? What to do now?

Shoot. Whatever they have, they shoot from it.
- Stop shooting now! - orders the commander.
- All the same, the cartridges will remain. Why are they? we wondered.
No matter what he said, I heard one word - Victory! Suddenly, I wanted to live! And how beautiful we will all begin to live now! I put on all my awards and asked to be photographed. For some reason I wanted among the flowers. Photographed in a flower bed.

On the seventh of June I had happiness, my wedding was. Some gave us a big party. I knew my husband for a long time: he was a captain, he commanded a company. We swore with him that if we stay alive, we will get married after the war. They gave us a month off.

We went to Kineshma, this is the Ivanovo region, to his parents. I rode a heroine, I never thought that you could meet a front-line girl like that. We have gone through so much, saved so many children for mothers, wives and husbands. And suddenly. I recognized the insult, I heard hurtful words. Prior to this, except for: "dear sister", "dear sister" did not hear anything else. And I was not some kind, I was pretty, clean.

They sat down to drink tea in the evening, the mother took her son to the kitchen and cries: “Who did you marry? On the front. You have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now? And now, when I think about it, I want to cry. Imagine: I brought a record, I loved it very much. There were such words: you are rightfully supposed to walk in the most fashionable shoes. It's about a front-line girl. I put it on, the older sister came up and smashed it in front of my eyes, saying that you have no rights. They destroyed all my front-line photographs.

Enough for us front-line girls. And after the war it was enough. Somehow they left us. They didn't protect. At the front it was different. You crawl - a fragment or a bullet. The guys will cover. "Lie down, sister! .." - and he falls on you, closes himself. And the bullet is already his. He is dead or injured. They saved me three times.

I became a sniper. And she could have been a signalman, a useful profession - both military and peaceful. Women's. But they said, it is necessary to shoot - they shot. Well shot. I have two Orders of Glory, four medals. For three years of war.

They shouted to us - Victory! Announced - Victory!! I remember my first feeling - joy. And immediately, at that very moment - fear! Panic! Panic! How to live on? Dad died near Stalingrad. Two older brothers went missing at the beginning of the war. Mom and I are left. Two women. How can we live? All our girls thought... Let's gather in the evening in the dugout... Each of them thinks about the future, about the fact that our life is just beginning now. We have both joy and fear. Previously, they were afraid of death, and now of life, we were equally afraid.

Truth! We talk, we talk, and then we sit and are silent.

How did the Motherland welcome us? I can’t live without sobs… Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women… They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there! They lured young p ... our men. Front-line b ... Military knots ... "Offended in every way ... Rich Russian dictionary ...
Claudia S-va, sniper

And from Kineshma we returned to the unit. We arrive and find out that our unit is not being disbanded, that we will clear the fields. Collective farms should be given land. For everyone the war was over, but for the sappers it was still going on. And mothers already know that Victory. And the grasses are tall, tall, but everything has grown old for the war, and there are mines and bombs all around. But people need land, and we were in a hurry. And every day your comrades die. Every day after the war it was necessary to bury. So many people we left behind in the fields.

It was like this: we will already hand over the land to the collective farm, a tractor will go, somewhere one mine remained, there were also anti-tank mines, and the tractor explodes, and the tractor driver explodes. There aren't many tractors. And to see these tears in the village after the war. The grandmothers are roaring. The men are roaring. I remember we had a soldier. Near Staraya Russa, I forgot the village, he was from there himself, went to clear mines from his collective farm, his field and died there. This village buried him there. He fought the whole war, went through the whole war, and after the war he died in his homeland, in his native field.

As soon as I begin to tell, I will be ill. I'm telling you, but I have a jelly inside, everything is shaking. Again I see everything, I imagine: how the dead are lying - their mouths are open, their intestines are turned out. I saw less firewood than the dead.

I can't see how children play "in the war," says Tamara Stepanovna. One wants to forget the war, it is difficult for a person to live with such a cruelly loaded memory, with such a tortured soul. But what will happen to us if they forget and do not pass on their memory to us? What will we be without it in our big and disturbing world?

After the war, it took so long to get used to it that you no longer need to be afraid of the sky. When my husband and I were demobilized and were driving home, I could not look out the window. So much was destroyed, so much broken. There are empty black pipes. For some reason they seemed very tall. In one place, I remember, there was a white stove with a chimney in the middle of the field. One stove in the middle of a large flat field.

I agree to everything. Nothing, no frills needed. Let nothing happen. Just let there be peace. Even if there is no bread. World. Only peace. You see, the world! We saved this world. Young guys died for this life. What did they regret? That now they will die, there will be no blood left anywhere. This is four years of war, four children could be born. I was also afraid to die, that the baby had not yet had time to give birth. Let, I thought, a girl was born, so that she would have a different fate. I wanted to give birth to a girl. And she gave birth to a daughter after the war. Then I wanted a granddaughter. And a granddaughter was born after the war.

"After the war…
After the war, human life was worth nothing. Let me give you one example… I was riding the bus after work, suddenly shouts began: “Stop the thief! Stop the thief! My purse…“ The bus stopped… Immediately - a flea market. The young officer takes the boy outside, puts his hand on his knee and - bang! breaks it in half. He jumps back ... And we are going ... No one stood up for the boy, did not call the policeman. They didn't call a doctor. And the officer has all his chest in military awards ... I began to get off at my stop, he jumped off and filed
hand to me: “Come in, girl ...“ Such a gallant ... "

“I want to talk… talk! Speak out! Finally, they want to listen to us. We have been silent for so many years, even at home we were silent. Decades. The first year, when I returned from the war, I talked and talked. Nobody listened. And I fell silent ... It's good that you came. I was waiting for someone all the time, I knew that someone would come. Must come. I was young then. Absolutely young. It's a pity. Do you know why? I couldn’t even remember…”

I reached Warsaw... And all on foot, the infantry, as they say, is the proletariat of war. They crawled on their belly... Don't ask me anymore... I don't like books about the war. About the heroes… We walked sick, coughing, not getting enough sleep, dirty, poorly dressed. Often hungry… But we won!”
Lyubov Ivanovna Lyubchik, commander of a platoon of machine gunners

“Will I find such words? About how I shot, I can tell. And about how she cried, no. It will remain unspoken. I know one thing: in war a person becomes terrible and incomprehensible. How to understand it?

You are a writer. Come up with something yourself. Something beautiful. Without lice and dirt, without vomit ... Without the smell of vodka and blood ... Not as terrible as life ... "
Anastasia Ivanovna Medvedkina, ordinary, machine gunner

Appolina Nikonovna Litskevich-Bayrak, junior lieutenant, commander of a sapper-miner platoon
The officers were invited for breakfast. I agreed, the sappers did not always get hot food, they mostly lived on pasture. When everyone was seated at the kitchen table, I drew attention to the Russian stove, closed with a damper. She approached and began to examine the damper. The officers joke: they say that a woman sees mines even in pots. I answer jokes and then I notice that at the very bottom, on the left side of the damper, there is a small hole. I take a closer look and see a thin wire that leads to the stove. I quickly turn to those who were sitting: “The house is mined, please leave the premises.” The officers fell silent and stared at me in disbelief, no one wanting to get up from the table. Meat smells, fried potatoes...

I repeated once more: "Immediately clear the room!" The sappers set to work. First, the shutter was removed. They "bitten" the wire with scissors... Well, there... There... There were several enameled liter mugs tied with twine in the stove. Soldier's dream! Better than a kettle. And in the depths of the stove, wrapped in black paper, are two large bundles. Twenty kilograms of explosives. Here are the pots for you.

We walked through Ukraine, it was already Stanislav, now Ivano-Frankivsk region. The platoon received the task: to urgently clear the sugar factory. Every minute is expensive: it is not known how the plant was mined, if the clockwork is connected, then an explosion can be expected from minute to minute. They went on a fast march on their mission. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of truck artillerymen began to pass, suddenly one jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and searched the sky for a "frame".

I don't see any aircraft. All around is quiet, no sound. Where is that "frame"? Then one of my sappers asked permission to get out of the line. I see, he goes to that gunner and gives him a slap in the face. Before I had time to figure something out, the artilleryman shouted: “Boys, they are beating ours!” Other gunners jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw probes, mine detectors, knapsacks and rushed to his rescue. A fight ensued. I couldn't understand what happened? Why did the platoon get into a fight? Every minute counts, and here is such a mess. I give the command: “Platoon, get in line!” Nobody pays attention to me. Then I pulled out my gun and fired into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout.

While everyone was calmed down, a considerable time passed. The captain came up to my platoon and asked: “Who is in charge here?” I reported. His eyes widened, he was even confused. Then he asked: “What happened here?” I couldn't answer because I didn't really know the reason. Then my platoon commander came out and told how it all happened. So I learned what a “frame” is, what an offensive word it was for a woman. Something like a whore. Front line...

The war ended, and we cleared fields, lakes, and rivers for another year. During the war, everything was thrown into the water, the main thing was to get through, to reach the goal on time. And now I had to think about something else ... About life ... For sappers, the war ended a few years after the war, they fought the longest.

To write such a book about the war that the war would make you sick, and the very thought of it would be disgusting. Mad. The generals themselves would be sick ...

My male friends (unlike girlfriends) are dumbfounded by such "feminine" logic. And again I hear the "male" argument: "You were not in the war." A. Maybe this is good: I do not know the passion of hatred, I have normal vision. "Non-military" vision ...

In optics, there is the concept of "aperture" - the ability of the lens to fix the captured image worse or better. So, the female memory of the war is the most “aperture-fast” in terms of tension of feelings, in terms of pain. I would even say that the "female" war is worse than the "male" one. Men hide behind history, behind facts, the war captures them as action and confrontation of ideas, different interests, and women get up out of feeling.

They are able to see what is closed for men. This is a different world. With a smell, with color, with a detailed world of existence: “they gave us knapsacks, we sewed skirts out of them”; “In the military registration and enlistment office, she entered one door in a dress, and went out the other in trousers and a tunic, the braid was cut off, one forelock was left on her head ...”; “The Germans shot the village and left ... We came to that place: trampled yellow sand, and on top - one children's shoe ...”.

More than once I was alarmed (especially by male writers): “Women invent you. They compose." But is it possible to think of such a thing? Write off someone? If this can be written off, then only life, she alone has such a fantasy.

Whatever women talk about, they always have the thought: “war is first of all murder, and then hard work. And then "and just an ordinary life: they sang, fell in love, twisted curlers ...

In the center there is always something unbearable and one does not want to die. And even more unbearable and more reluctant to kill, because a woman gives life. Gives. For a long time she carries it in herself, nurses her. I realized that it's harder for women to kill...

Men ... They are reluctant to let women into their world, into their territory ...

She was looking for a woman at the Minsk Tractor Plant, she served as a sniper. She was a famous sniper. She was written about more than once in front-line newspapers. My home phone number was given to me in Moscow by her friends, but it's an old one. My last name was also my maiden name. I went to the plant where she worked, to the personnel department, and I heard from the men (the director of the plant and the head of the personnel department): “Are there not enough men? Why would you listen to these women's stories. Women's fantasies ... "

She came to one family ... Husband and wife fought. They met at the front and got married there: “We celebrated our wedding in a trench. Before the fight. And I made myself a white dress from a German parachute. He is a machine gunner, she is a messenger.

The man immediately sent the woman to the kitchen: "You cook something for us." Already the kettle was boiling, and the sandwiches were cut, she sat down next to us, her husband immediately picked her up: “Where are the strawberries? Where is our country hotel? After my insistent request, he reluctantly gave up his place with the words: “Tell me how I taught you. Without tears and feminine trifles: I wanted to be beautiful, I cried when the braid was cut off. Later, she confessed to me in a whisper: “All night long I studied the volume of the History of the Great Patriotic War. Was afraid for me. And now I'm worried that I won't remember. Not right, I'll tell you."

It happened more than once, not in one house.

Yes, they cry a lot. They scream. After I leave, they swallow heart pills. They call an ambulance. But they still ask: “You come. Be sure to come. We've been silent for so long. For forty years they were silent ... "

Code to embed on a website or blog.

When was the first time in history that women appeared in the army?

- Already in the IV century BC, women fought in the Greek troops in Athens and Sparta. Later they participated in the campaigns of Alexander the Great.

The Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin wrote about our ancestors: “Slav women sometimes went to war with their fathers and spouses without fear of death: thus, during the siege of Constantinople in 626, the Greeks found many female corpses among the killed Slavs. Mother, raising children, prepared them to be warriors.

- And in the new time?

- For the first time - in England in 1560-1650 they began to form hospitals in which female soldiers served.

What happened in the 20th century?

- The beginning of the century ... In the First World War in England, women were already taken to the Royal Air Force, the Royal Auxiliary Corps and the Women's Legion of Motor Transport were formed - in the amount of 100 thousand people.

In Russia, Germany, France, many women also began to serve in military hospitals and hospital trains.

And during World War II, the world witnessed a female phenomenon. Women served in all branches of the military already in many countries of the world: in the British army - 225 thousand, in the American - 450-500 thousand, in the German - 500 thousand ...

About a million women fought in the Soviet army. They mastered all military specialties, including the most "male" ones. There was even a language problem: the words “tanker”, “infantryman”, “submachine gunner” did not have a feminine gender until that time, because this work had never been done by a woman. Women's words were born there, in the war ...

From a conversation with a historian

A man greater than war (from the book's diary)

Millions killed cheaply

Trampled a path in the dark...

Osip Mandelstam

1978–1985

I'm writing a book about the war...

I, who did not like to read military books, although in my childhood and youth it was everyone's favorite reading. All my peers. And this is not surprising - we were children of the Victory. Children of the winners. The first thing I remember about the war? His childhood longing among incomprehensible and frightening words. The war was always remembered: at school and at home, at weddings and christenings, on holidays and at wakes. Even in children's conversations. A neighbor boy once asked me: “What are people doing underground? How do they live there? We also wanted to unravel the mystery of the war.

Then I thought about death ... And I never stopped thinking about it, for me it became the main secret of life.

Everything for us led from that terrible and mysterious world. In our family, the Ukrainian grandfather, my mother's father, died at the front, was buried somewhere in the Hungarian land, and the Belarusian grandmother, my father's mother, died of typhus in the partisans, her two sons served in the army and went missing in the first months of the war, from three returned one. My father. Eleven distant relatives, along with their children, were burned alive by the Germans - some in their hut, some in the village church. It was like that in every family. Everyone has.

The village boys played "Germans" and "Russians" for a long time. German words were shouting: “Hyundai hoch!”, “Tsuryuk”, “Hitler kaput!”.

The village of my childhood after the war was female. Babia. I don't remember male voices. This is how it remained with me: women talk about the war. They cry. They sing like they cry.

In school we were taught to love death. We wrote essays about how we would like to die in the name of ... We dreamed ...

I have been looking for a long time ... What words can convey what I hear? I was looking for a genre that would correspond to the way I see the world, how my eye, my ear works.

Once the book “I am from a fiery village” by A. Adamovich, Ya. Bryl, V. Kolesnik fell into the hands. I experienced such a shock only once, while reading Dostoevsky. And here - an unusual form: the novel is assembled from the voices of life itself. from what I heard as a child, from what is now heard on the street, at home, in a cafe, in a trolleybus. So! The circle is closed. I found what I was looking for. I had a presentiment.

Ales Adamovich became my teacher...

For two years, I didn’t so much meet and record as I thought. Read. What will my book be about? Well, another book about the war... Why? There have already been thousands of wars - small and large, known and unknown. And more has been written about them. But... Men also wrote about men - it became clear right away. Everything that we know about the war, we know from the "male voice". We are all captive to "male" ideas and "male" feelings of war. "Male" words. And the women are silent. Nobody but me asked my grandmother. My mom. Even those who were at the front are silent. If they suddenly begin to remember, then they tell not a “female” war, but a “male” one. Adjust to the canon. And only at home or, having cried in the circle of front-line girlfriends, they begin to talk about their war, which is unfamiliar to me. Not just me, all of us. In her journalistic trips she was a witness, the only listener of completely new texts. And she was shocked, as in childhood. In these stories, a monstrous grin of the mysterious was visible ... When women speak, they do not have or almost do not have what we are used to reading and hearing about: how some people heroically killed others and won. Or lost. What was the technique and what generals. Women's stories are different and about something else. The "women's" war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting and its own space of feelings. Your words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are just people who are engaged in inhuman human deeds. And not only they (people!) suffer there, but also the earth, and birds, and trees. All who live with us on earth. They suffer without words, which is even worse.

I want to write the history of this war. Women's history.

After the first meeting...

Surprise: these women have military professions - a medical officer, a sniper, a machine gunner, an anti-aircraft gun commander, a sapper, and now they are accountants, laboratory assistants, guides, teachers ... Mismatch of roles - here and there. They seem to remember not about themselves, but about some other girls. Today they surprise themselves. And in front of my eyes, history “humanizes” and becomes like ordinary life. Another light appears.

There are amazing storytellers, they have pages in their lives that can compete with the best pages of the classics. A person sees himself so clearly from above - from the sky, and from below - from the earth. Before him all the way up and down - from the angel to the beast. Memories are not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a vanished reality, but a rebirth of the past when time turns back. First of all, it is creativity. By telling, people create, "write" their lives. It happens that they “add” and “rewrite”. Here you have to be alert. On guard. At the same time, pain melts, destroys any falseness. Temperature too high! Sincerely, I was convinced, simple people behave - nurses, cooks, laundresses ... They, how to put it more accurately, get words from themselves, and not from newspapers and read books - not from someone else's. But only from their own suffering and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, oddly enough, are often more subject to processing by time. His general encryption. Infected with secondary knowledge. Myths. Often you have to walk for a long time, in different circles, in order to hear a story about a “female” war, and not about a “male” one: how they retreated, how they advanced, on which sector of the front ... It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. Like a persistent portrait painter.

We are advancing... The first German settlements... We are young. Strong. Four years without women. Wine cellars. Snack. Caught German girls and...
Ten people raped one ... There were not enough women, the population fled from the Soviet army, they took the young. Girls... Twelve-thirteen years old... If she cried, they beat her, stuffed something into her mouth. She hurts, but we laugh. Now I don't understand how I could... A boy from an intelligent family... But it was me...
The only thing we were afraid of was that our girls would not find out about it. Our nurses. They were embarrassed..."
"Someone betrayed us ... The Germans found out where the partisan detachment was stationed. They cordoned off the forest and the approaches to it from all sides. We hid in wild thickets, we were saved by swamps where the punishers did not go. A bog. Both equipment and people were We had a radio operator with us, she had recently given birth. The child is hungry... He is asking for breasts... But the mother herself is hungry, there is no milk, and the child is crying. The whole group - thirty people ... Do you understand?
We make a decision ... No one dares to convey the order of the commander, but the mother herself guesses. He lowers the bundle with the child into the water and keeps it there for a long time ... The child no longer screams ... Not a sound ... But we cannot raise our eyes. Not on mother, not on each other ... "
"We were surrounded ... Political instructor Lunin was with us ... He read out the order that Soviet soldiers did not surrender to the enemy. As Comrade Stalin said, we have no prisoners, but there are traitors. The guys took out pistols ... The political instructor ordered: "Do not necessary. Live, lads, you are young. "And he shot himself ...
"After the war ... After the war, human life was worth nothing. Let me give you one example ... I was riding the bus after work, suddenly shouts began: "Stop the thief! Stop the thief! My purse..." The bus stopped... Immediately - a flea market. A young officer takes the boy out into the street, puts his hand on his knee and - bang! breaks it in half. Jumps back ... And we are going ... for the boy, didn't call a policeman. They didn't call a doctor. And the officer's whole chest is in military awards... I started to get off at my stop, he jumped down and gave me his hand: "Come in, girl..." Such a gallant..."
"Many of us believed... We thought that everything would change after the war... Stalin would believe his people. But the war was not over yet, and trains had already gone to Magadan. , survived in the German camps, who were taken by the Germans to work - everyone who saw Europe. Could tell how people live there. Without communists. What kind of houses and roads are there. That there are no collective farms anywhere ...
After the victory, everyone was silent. They were silent and afraid, as before the war ...

Current page: 6 (total book has 20 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 14 pages]

About life and being

“We dreamed… We wanted to fight…

We were placed in the car, and classes began. Everything was different from what we imagined at home. You had to get up early, and you're on the run all day. And we still lived the old life. We were indignant when the squad leader, junior sergeant Gulyaev, who had a four-year education, taught us the rules and pronounce certain words incorrectly. We thought: what can he teach? And he taught us how not to die...

After quarantine, before taking the oath, the foreman brought uniforms: overcoats, caps, tunics, skirts, instead of a combination - two shirts sewn from calico with sleeves, instead of windings - stockings and American heavy boots with metal horseshoes in full heels and on socks . In the company, in terms of my height and build, I turned out to be the smallest, one hundred and fifty-three centimeters tall, shoes of the thirty-fifth size and, of course, such meager sizes were not sewn by the military industry, and even more so America did not supply them to us. I got shoes forty-two size, put them on and take them off without unlacing, and they are so heavy that I walked dragging my feet on the ground. Sparks sparked from my marching step on the stone pavement, and walking was like anything but a marching step. It is terrible to remember how nightmarish the first march was. I was ready to accomplish a feat, but I was not ready to wear size forty-two instead of the thirty-fifth. It's so hard and so ugly! So ugly!

The commander saw me walking, called me out of action:

- Smirnova, how do you go as a drill? What, you weren't taught? Why don't you lift your feet? I announce three outfits out of turn ...

I answered:

- Yes, comrade senior lieutenant, three outfits out of turn! - turned to go, and fell. She fell out of her boots… Legs were covered in blood….

Then it turned out that I could no longer walk. The company shoemaker Parshin was ordered to sew boots for me from an old raincoat, size thirty-five ... "

Nonna Alexandrovna Smirnova, private, anti-aircraft gunner

“And how funny it was ...

Discipline, charters, insignia - all this military wisdom was not given immediately. We stand guarding the planes. And the charter says that if someone is walking, you must stop: “Stop, who is walking?”. My girlfriend saw the regiment commander and shouted: “Wait, who is coming? Excuse me, but I will shoot!”. Imagine it to yourself. She shouts: “Excuse me, but I will shoot!”. Excuse me… Ha-ha-ha…”

Antonina Grigorievna Bondareva, Guard Lieutenant, Senior Pilot

“The girls arrived at the school with long braids… With hairstyles… I also have braids around my head… How can I wash them? Dry where? You just washed them, and anxiety, you need to run. Our commander Marina Raskova ordered everyone to cut their braids. The girls cut their hair and cried. And Lilya Litvyak, later a famous pilot, did not want to part with her scythe.

I go to Raskova:

- Comrade commander, your order has been fulfilled, only Litvyak refused.

Marina Raskova, despite her feminine softness, could be a very strict commander. She sent me:

- What kind of party organizer are you if you can’t get the order to be carried out! March all around!

Dresses, shoes with heels ... How we feel sorry for them, they hid them in bags. During the day in boots, and in the evening at least a little bit in shoes in front of the mirror. Raskova saw - and a few days later the order: send all women's clothing home in parcels. Like this! But we studied the new aircraft in half a year instead of two years, as it should be in peacetime.

In the first days of training, two crews died. Four coffins were placed. All three regiments, we all wept bitterly.

Raskova spoke:

- Friends, wipe your tears. These are our first losses. There will be many. Clench your heart into a fist...

Then, in the war, they buried without tears. Stop crying.

They flew fighter jets. The height itself was a terrible burden for the entire female body, sometimes the stomach was pressed directly into the spine. And our girls flew and shot down aces, and what aces! Like this! You know, when we were walking, the men looked at us with surprise: the pilots were coming. They admired us…”

Claudia Ivanovna Terekhova, captain of aviation

“In the fall, they called me to the military registration and enlistment office ... I received the military commissar and asked: “Do you know how to jump?”. I confessed that I was afraid. For a long time he campaigned for the landing troops: a beautiful uniform, chocolate every day. But I have been afraid of heights since childhood. “Do you want to join anti-aircraft artillery?” And I really know what it is - anti-aircraft artillery? Then he offers: "Let's send you to the partisan detachment." - “And how can my mother write from there to Moscow?” He takes it and writes with a red pencil in my direction: “The Steppe Front ...”

On the train, a young captain fell in love with me. He spent the whole night in our car. He was already burned by the war, wounded several times. He looked and looked at me and said: “Verochka, just don’t lower yourself, don’t become rude. You are so tender right now. I've already seen everything!" And then something in the spirit that, they say, it is difficult to get out of the war clean. From the hell.

For a month, my friend and I traveled to the Fourth Guards Army of the Second Ukrainian Front. Finally caught up. The chief surgeon came out for a few minutes, looked at us, led us into the operating room: “Here is your operating table…”. Ambulances come up one after another, large cars, Studebakers, the wounded lie on the ground, on stretchers. We only asked: “Who should be taken first?” – “Those who are silent…” An hour later I was already standing at my desk, operating. And off you go ... You operate for days, after a bit you take a nap, you quickly rub your eyes, you wash yourself - and again at your table. And two people later, the third is dead. We couldn't help everyone. The third one is dead...

At the station in Zhmerinka, they came under a terrible bombardment. The train stopped and we ran. Our political officer, yesterday he had his appendicitis cut out, and today he has already fled. We sat all night in the forest, and our train was smashed to pieces. In the early morning, at a low level, German planes began to comb the forest. Where are you going? You won't climb into the ground like a mole. I hugged a birch and stand: “Oh, mommy mommy! Will I die? If I survive, I will be the happiest person in the world.” To whom she later told how she held on to the birch, everyone laughed. After all, what was it to get into me? I stand to my full height, white birch ... Scream!

I met Victory Day in Vienna. We went to the zoo, we really wanted to go to the zoo. You could go see the concentration camp. Everyone was taken and shown. I didn’t go… Now I wonder: why didn’t I go? I wanted something joyful. funny. To see something from another life…”

Vera Vladimirovna Shevaldysheva, senior lieutenant, surgeon

“There were three of us ... Mom, dad and me ... Father was the first to go to the front. Mom wanted to go with her father, she is a nurse, but he was sent in one direction, she in the other. And I was only sixteen years old... They didn't want to take me. I went and went to the military registration and enlistment office, and a year later they took me.

We traveled by train for a long time. Soldiers from hospitals were returning with us, there were also young guys there. They told us about the front, and we sat with our mouths open and listened. They said that we would be shelled, and we are sitting, waiting: when will the shelling begin? Like, we will come and say that they have already been fired upon.

We've arrived. And we were assigned not to rifles, but to boilers, to troughs. Girls of all my age, before that our parents loved us, pampered us. I was the only child in the family. And then we pull firewood, heat the stoves. Then we take this ash and put it into boilers instead of soap, because the soap will be brought, and then - it is over. Linen dirty, lousy. In the blood ... In winter, heavy from the blood ... "

Svetlana Vasilievna Katykhina, fighter of the field bath and laundry detachment

“I still remember my first wounded man… I remember his face… He had an open fracture of the middle third of the thigh. Imagine, a bone sticks out, a shrapnel wound, everything is turned inside out. This bone ... I knew theoretically what to do, but when I crawled up to him and saw this, I felt bad, I felt sick. And suddenly I hear: “Sister, drink some water.” This is what this wounded man is telling me. Regrets. I see this picture now. As he said this, I came to my senses: “Ah, I think, damn Turgenev’s young lady! A person dies, and she, a gentle creature, you see, is sick.” I unwrapped an individual package, closed the wound for them - and I felt better, and provided the necessary assistance.

Now I watch films about the war: a nurse is on the front line, she is neat, clean, not in wadded trousers, but in a skirt, she has a cap on a tuft. Well, not true! How could we pull out the wounded, if we were like that ... You don’t crawl very much in a skirt when there are only men around. And to tell the truth, skirts were only given to us at the end of the war as elegant ones. At the same time, we also received lower jersey instead of men's underwear. They did not know where to go from happiness. The gymnasts were unbuttoned so that it was visible ... "

Sofya Konstantinovna Dubnyakova, senior sergeant, medical instructor

“Bombing… Bombing and bombing, bombing and bombing and bombing. Everyone rushed to run somewhere ... And I run. I hear someone moan: “Help… Help…”. But I'm running ... A few minutes later something comes to me, I feel a sanitary bag on my shoulder. And also shame. Where did the fear go? I run back: a wounded soldier is moaning. I rush to bandage him. Then the second, the third...

The fight ended at night. And in the morning fresh snow fell. Under it are the dead... Many have their hands raised up... To the sky... Ask me: what is happiness? I will answer ... Suddenly find among the dead - a living person ... "

Anna Ivanovna Belyay, nurse

“I saw the first dead man… I stood over him and wept… I mourn… Then the wounded man calls: “Bandage your leg!”. His leg is dangling on his trouser leg, his leg has been torn off. I cut off the trouser leg: “Put my leg! Put it next to me." Put. They, if conscious, do not allow to leave either their arm or their leg. They take away. And if they die, they ask to be buried together.

During the war, I thought: I will never forget anything. But forgetting...

Such a young, interesting guy. And lies dead. I imagined that all the dead were buried with military honors, and he was taken and dragged to the hazel tree. They dug a grave ... Without a coffin, without anything, they buried it in the ground, they just fell asleep like that. The sun shone brightly, and on him, too... It was a warm summer day... There was not a raincoat, nothing, he was put in a tunic, riding breeches, as he was, and all this is still new, he must have recently arrived. So they laid it down and buried it. The hole was shallow, only for him to lie down. And the wound is small, it is fatal - in the temple, but there is little blood, and the person lies as if alive, only very pale.

After the shelling, the bombing began. They bombed this place. I don't know what's left...

And how were they buried surrounded by people? Right there, nearby, near the trench, where we ourselves are sitting, they buried it - and that's it. The bump only remained. Of course, if the Germans or tanks follow him, they will immediately trample him. Ordinary earth remained, no trace. Often buried in the forest under the trees... Under these oaks, under these birches...

I still can't go to the forest. Especially where old oaks or birches grow… I can’t sit there…”

Olga Vasilievna Korzh, medical instructor of the cavalry squadron

I went to the front as a materialist. Atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was well taught. And there ... There I began to pray ... I always prayed before the fight, read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... There is only one meaning, so that I return to my mom and dad. I did not know real prayers and did not read the Bible. Nobody saw me pray. I am secret. I prayed furtively. Carefully. Because… We were different then, other people lived then. You understand? We thought differently, we understood… Because… I will tell you a story… Once there was a believer among the new arrivals, and the soldiers laughed when he prayed: “Well, did your God help you? If he is, how does he endure everything? They did not believe, like the man who shouted at the feet of the crucified Christ, they say, if He loves you, why won't He save you? After the war, I read the Bible... I have been reading it all my life... And this soldier, he was no longer a young man, did not want to shoot. He refused: “I can’t! I won't kill!" Everyone agreed to kill, but he did not. What about time? What a time... Terrible time... Because... They handed over to the tribunal and shot two days later... Bang! Bach!

Time is different… People are different… How can I explain it to you? How…

Fortunately, I... I didn't see the people I killed... But... Anyway... Now I understand that I killed. I think about it... Because... Because the old one has become. I pray for my soul. I ordered my daughter to take all my orders and medals not to the museum, but to the church after death. I gave it to my father… They come to me in a dream… Dead… My dead… Although I didn’t see them, they come and look at me. I'm looking, looking with my eyes, maybe someone is wounded, albeit seriously wounded, but you can still save. I don’t know how to say… But they are all dead…”

Vera Borisovna Sapgir, sergeant, anti-aircraft gunner

“The most unbearable thing for me was amputations ... Often such high amputations were done that they would cut off my leg, and I could hardly hold it, I could hardly carry it to put it in the pelvis. I remember that they are very heavy. You take it quietly so that the wounded person does not hear, and you carry it like a child ... A small child ... Especially if the amputation is high, far behind the knee. I couldn't get used to it. The wounded under anesthesia groan or obscene. Three-story Russian mat. I've always been covered in blood... It's cherry... Black...

I didn't write to my mom about it. I wrote that everything is fine, that I am warmly dressed, shod. She sent three to the front, it was hard for her ... "

Maria Selivestrovna Bozhok, nurse

“I was born and raised in the Crimea… Near Odessa. In the forty-first year, she graduated from the tenth grade of the Sloboda school in the Kordymsky district. When the war began, in the early days I listened to the radio. I understood - we are retreating ... I ran to the military registration and enlistment office, they sent me home. I went there twice more and was rejected twice. On July 28, retreating units were moving through our Slobodka, and together with them, without any summons, I went to the front.

When she first saw the wounded, she fainted. Then it passed. When she crawled under the bullets for the first time after the fighter, she screamed so that it seemed to block the roar of the battle. Then I got used to it. Ten days later I was wounded, I pulled out the fragment myself, bandaged myself ...

December 25, 1942... Our 333rd Division of the 56th Army occupied the heights on the outskirts of Stalingrad. The enemy decided to return it at all costs. A fight ensued. Tanks moved towards us, but they were stopped by artillery. The Germans rolled back, a wounded lieutenant, artilleryman Kostya Khudov, remained in no man's land. The orderlies who tried to carry him out were killed. Two shepherd nurses crawled (I saw them there for the first time), but they were also killed. And then I, taking off my earflaps, stood up to my full height, at first quietly, and then louder and louder I sang our favorite pre-war song “I saw you off to a feat”. Everything fell silent on both sides - both ours and the Germans. She went up to Kostya, bent down, put her on a drag sled and took her to ours. I’m walking, but I’m thinking to myself: “If only they didn’t shoot in the back, it’s better to shoot in the head.” Right now... now... The last minutes of my life... Now! I wonder: will I feel pain or not? How scary, mommy! But not a single shot was fired...

Forms were not to be attacked by us: they gave us a new one, and in a couple of days it was covered in blood. My first wounded man was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded man was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, a mortar platoon sergeant. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still bears a large scar. In total, I carried four hundred and eighty-one wounded out of the fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion ... They dragged men on themselves, two or three times heavier than us. And the wounded are even worse. You are dragging him and his weapons, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You take eighty kilograms on yourself and drag. You lose... You go for the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And in you yourself forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore ... I can’t believe it myself ... "

Maria Petrovna Smirnova (Kukharskaya), medical instructor

“Forty-second year ... We are going on a mission. We crossed the front line, stopped at some cemetery. The Germans, we knew, were five kilometers away from us. It was night, they were throwing flares all the time. Parachuting. These rockets burn for a long time and illuminate the whole area far away. The platoon commander led me to the edge of the cemetery, showed me where the rockets were thrown from, where the bushes were from which the Germans could appear. I am not afraid of the dead, I have not been afraid of the cemetery since childhood, but I was twenty-two years old, I was on duty for the first time ... And I turned gray in these two hours ... I found the first gray hair, a whole streak in my morning. I stood and looked at this bush, it rustled, moved, it seemed to me that the Germans were coming from there ... And someone else ... Some kind of monsters ... And I was alone ...

Is it a woman's business to stand at night at the post in the cemetery? Men had a simpler attitude to everything, they were already ready for this idea that they had to stand guard, they had to shoot ... But for us it was still a surprise. Or make a transition of thirty kilometers. With combat gear. By the heat. The horses fell ... "

Vera Safronovna Davydova, ordinary infantryman

“You ask what is the worst thing in war? You expect from me... I know what you expect... You think: I will answer: the worst thing in war is death. Die.

Well, like this? I know your brother... Journalistic tricks... Ha-ha-ah-ah... Why aren't you laughing? BUT?

And I'll say something else... The worst thing for me in the war is to wear men's underpants. That was scary. And this is somehow for me ... I won’t express myself ... Well, firstly, it’s very ugly ... You are in the war, you are going to die for the Motherland, and you are wearing men’s shorts. In general, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's shorts were then worn long. Wide. Sewn from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and they are all in men's shorts. Oh my God! Winter and summer. Four years.

They crossed the Soviet border... They finished off, as our commissar said at political classes, the beast in its own lair. Near the first Polish village, we were changed, given new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's underpants and bras for the first time. For the first time in the whole war. Ha-ah... Well, of course... We saw normal lingerie...

Why don't you laugh? Crying... Well, why?

Lola Akhmetova, private, shooter

“They didn’t take me to the front ... I’m only sixteen years old, I’m still far from seventeen. And they took a paramedic from us, they brought her a summons. She cried a lot, a little boy remained at her house. I went to the recruiting office: "Take me instead of her." Mom didn’t let me in: “Nina, how old are you? Maybe the war will end there soon.” Mom is mom.

Fighters who are crackers, who will leave me a piece of sugar. Protected. I didn't know that we had a Katyusha, standing behind us in cover. She started to shoot. She shoots, there is thunder around, everything is on fire. And it struck me so much, I was so frightened of this thunder, fire, noise that I fell into a puddle, lost my cap. The fighters laugh: “What are you, Ninochek? What are you, honey?"

Hand-to-hand attacks… What do I remember? I remember the crunch ... Hand-to-hand combat begins: and immediately this crunch - cartilage breaks, human bones crack. Animal cries... When the attack, I go with the soldiers, well, a little behind, consider - next. Everything before my eyes… Men stab each other. They are finishing off. They break. They hit with a bayonet in the mouth, in the eye ... In the heart, in the stomach ... And this ... How to describe? I am weak... I am weak to describe... In a word, women don't know such men, they don't see them like that at home. Neither women nor children. It's horrendous in general...

After the war, she returned home to Tula. She screamed all the time at night. At night, my mother and sister sat with me ... I woke up from my own scream ... "

Nina Vladimirovna Kovelenova, senior sergeant, medical officer of a rifle company

“We arrived at Stalingrad ... There were mortal battles. The most deadly place... The water and the earth were red... And now we need to cross from one bank of the Volga to the other. Nobody wants to listen to us: “What? Girls? Who the hell needs you here! We need riflemen and machine gunners, not signalmen.” And there are a lot of us, eighty people. By evening, the girls who were bigger were taken, but they don’t take us together with one girl. Small in stature. Didn't grow up. They wanted to leave it in reserve, but I raised such a roar ...

In the first battle, the officers pushed me off the parapet, I stuck my head out so that I could see everything myself. There was some kind of curiosity, childish curiosity ... Naive! The commander shouts: “Private Semyonova! Private Semyonova, are you out of your mind! Such a mother ... will kill! I couldn’t understand this: how could this kill me if I had just arrived at the front? I did not yet know what death is ordinary and indiscriminate. You can't beg her, you can't persuade her.

People's militia was brought up on old lorries. Old men and boys. They were given two grenades each and sent into battle without a rifle, a rifle had to be obtained in battle. After the battle, there was no one to bandage ... All the dead ... "

Nina Alekseevna Semenova, private, signalman

“I went through the war from end to end ...

She dragged the first wounded man, they buckled at the very leg. I drag and whisper: “Even if I didn’t die… Even if I didn’t die…”. I bandage him, and weep, and I say something kind to him. And the commander passed by. And he yelled at me, even something with a foul language ...

Why did he yell at you?

“You shouldn’t have been so sorry, crying like me. I'll be exhausted, and there are many wounded.

We go, the dead are lying, shorn and their heads are green, like potatoes from the sun. They are scattered like potatoes ... As they fled, they lie on a plowed field ... Like potatoes ... "

Ekaterina Mikhailovna Rabchaeva, private, medical instructor

“I won’t tell you where it was ... In what place ... Once there were two hundred wounded people in the barn, and I was alone. The wounded were brought directly from the battlefield, a lot. It was in some village… Well, I don’t remember, so many years have passed… I remember that for four days I didn’t sleep, didn’t sit down, everyone shouted: “Sister! Sister! Help, dear!" I ran from one to another, once I stumbled and fell, and immediately fell asleep. I woke up from a scream, the commander, a young lieutenant, also wounded, got up on his healthy side and shouted: “Silence! Silence, I order!”. He realized that I was exhausted, and everyone was calling, it hurts: “Sister! Sister!" I jumped up, how I ran - I don’t know where, what. And then the first time I got to the front, I cried.

And so... You never know your heart. In winter, captured German soldiers were led past our unit. They walked frozen, with torn blankets on their heads, burnt overcoats. And the frost is such that the birds fell on the fly. The birds were freezing. One soldier was walking in this column... A boy... Tears were frozen on his face... And I was carrying bread in a wheelbarrow to the dining room. He can’t take his eyes off this car, he doesn’t see me, only this car. Bread... Bread... I take and break off one loaf and give it to him. He takes... He takes and does not believe. Doesn't believe... Doesn't believe!

I was happy... I was happy that I couldn't hate. I surprised myself…”

Natalya Ivanovna Sergeeva, private, nurse

Alekseevich is not feminine in war. With

Man is more than war (from the book's diary)

1978-1985

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About life and being

Man is more than war
(from the book's diary)