Page 1 of 73

Light and bitter

in memory of daughters

my Lydia and Irina.

God! Your world is becoming empty and scary!

Part one. A SOLDIER IS TREATED

On September fourteenth, one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

This 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 unruly fields, where it remained unharvested. only potatoes, beets and corn, broken by the wind, dangling in rags in withered rags with already broken off cobs, in places black and bald burnt from incendiary bombs and shells.

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

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down with huge mossy stones, seemed to squeeze the side of the mountain, and along this side, clinging to stones and roots, getting tangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all sorts of woody and herbal nonsense, emerging from the stones as a spring, it ran into the ravine was a river, and the further it ran, the faster, fuller and more talkative it became.

Beyond the river, in a nearby field, half of which had already been cleared and was glowing green with reapings sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a stack of sour cream, settled and touched by black on the deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered in almost drooping potato tops, here and there with sunflowers, and here and there with hawkweeds, and thistle between densely littered shaggy bushes.

Having made a sharp turn towards the ravine that was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of the dope, which had grown and was impassably woven in it. Like a maddened river, it noisily flew out of the darkness towards the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed towards the village that was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds that blew through it.

We could barely see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a sharp spire of a church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made another bend and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a Siberian-dark farmstead, roofed with planks, made of thick logs, with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses dotted around the back and gardens. A lot of things had already burned there and something else was smoking sluggishly and sleepily, wafting out smoke and tar fumes.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village in front of us still had to be recaptured, how many of the enemy were there, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat as quickly as possible - no one yet knew.

Our units were digging in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, behind the river, about two hundred meters away from us, the infantry was moving on the field and pretending that they were also digging in, but in fact the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate their bellies potatoes. In the wooden farm, in the morning, in two voices, echoing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and fell silent with a painful groan. The infantry sent a patrol there and profited from fresh meat. Our people also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhitomir region and he said that no one in the world could tar a pig with straw better than him, he would only do sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After at our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, they quite densely and carefully targeted two people with mortars and then began to fire from machine guns, and when the bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest and hit the trunks, then this It seems like a complete fire and nightmare; the situation has become not only complicated, but also alarming.

We all immediately began to work more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer ran towards the infantry along the slope of the field with a pistol in his hand and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung one of his subordinates with his boot, forcing them to turn on the fires. It came to us: “You idiots! Razmundyai! Once...", and the like, familiar to our brother if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

We dug in, gave up communications to the infantry, and sent a signalman with a device there. He said that all the guys here were guys, therefore, warriors who had been swept up in Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having eaten too many potatoes, were sleeping in all sorts of places, and the company commander was going crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we were on guard and in combat readiness.

The cross on the church flickered like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village became more clearly visible with its tops, the sounds of roosters came from it, a motley herd of cows came out into the field and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects across the hills. Behind the village there are hills, turning into hills, then into mountains, then - lying heavily on the ground and resting like a blue hump in the skies blurred by the autumn slurry - the same pass that Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, enter the enemy’s side and rear and, with the help of a deft maneuver, achieve as quickly as possible a bloodless victory. But, having laid on these slopes where we sat now, about a hundred thousand lives, Russian troops Let's go look for luck elsewhere.

Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy, that in this, in “our” war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the “old” generals, again crowded around Duklinsky Pass, trying to cross it, get to Slovakia and with such a deft, bloodless maneuver cut off Hitler’s troops from the Balkans, take Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries out of the war, and end the exhausting war as quickly as possible.

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

On September fourteenth, one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

This 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 unruly fields, where it remained unharvested. only potatoes, beets and corn, broken by the wind, dangling in rags in withered rags with already broken off cobs, in places black and bald burnt from incendiary bombs and shells.

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

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down with huge mossy stones, seemed to squeeze the side of the mountain, and along this side, clinging to stones and roots, getting tangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all sorts of woody and herbal nonsense, emerging from the stones as a spring, it ran into the ravine was a river, and the further it ran, the faster, fuller and more talkative it became.

Beyond the river, in a nearby field, half of which had already been cleared and was glowing green with reapings sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a stack of sour cream, settled and touched by black on the deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered in almost drooping potato tops, here and there with sunflowers, and here and there with hawkweeds, and thistle between densely littered shaggy bushes.

Having made a sharp turn towards the ravine that was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of the dope, which had grown and was impassably woven in it. Like a maddened river, it noisily flew out of the darkness towards the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed towards the village that was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds that blew through it.

We could barely see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a sharp spire of a church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made another bend and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a Siberian-dark farmstead, roofed with planks, made of thick logs, with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses dotted around the back and gardens. A lot of things had already burned there and something else was smoking sluggishly and sleepily, wafting out smoke and tar fumes.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village in front of us still had to be recaptured, how many of the enemy were there, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat as quickly as possible - no one yet knew.

Our units were digging in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, behind the river, about two hundred meters away from us, the infantry was moving on the field and pretending that they were also digging in, but in fact the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate their bellies potatoes. In the wooden farm, in the morning, in two voices, echoing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and fell silent with a painful groan. The infantry sent a patrol there and profited from fresh meat. Our people also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhitomir region and he said that no one in the world could tar a pig with straw better than him, he would only do sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After at our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, they quite densely and carefully targeted two people with mortars and then began to fire from machine guns, and when the bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest and hit the trunks, then this It seems like a complete fire and nightmare; the situation has become not only complicated, but also alarming.

We all immediately began to work more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer ran towards the infantry along the slope of the field with a pistol in his hand and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung one of his subordinates with his boot, forcing them to turn on the fires. It came to us: “You idiots! Razmundyai! Once...", and the like, familiar to our brother if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

We dug in, gave up communications to the infantry, and sent a signalman with a device there. He said that all the guys here were guys, therefore, warriors who had been swept up in Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having eaten too many potatoes, were sleeping in all sorts of places, and the company commander was going crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we were on guard and in combat readiness.

The cross on the church flickered like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village became more clearly visible with its tops, the sounds of roosters came from it, a motley herd of cows came out into the field and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects across the hills. Behind the village there are hills, turning into hills, then into mountains, then - lying heavily on the ground and resting like a blue hump in the skies blurred by the autumn slurry - the same pass that Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, enter the enemy’s side and rear and, with the help of a deft maneuver, achieve as quickly as possible a bloodless victory. But, having laid down about a hundred thousand lives on these slopes where we were now sitting, the Russian troops went to seek their fortune elsewhere.

Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy, that in this, in “our” war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the “old” generals, again crowded around Duklinsky Pass, trying to cross it, get to Slovakia and with such a deft, bloodless maneuver cut off Hitler’s troops from the Balkans, take Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries out of the war, and end the exhausting war as quickly as possible.

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

At night, several fires lit up in front of us, a replacement infantry company arrived and got busy with its main business - boiling potatoes, but the company did not have time to dig in properly, and in the morning, just from the village they were shot, there was a crackling sound, and the Germans ran up the hill with a hubbub, like ours like a cow with the tongue licked it off. The infantry, gorged on potatoes, rattling their pots, trotted sluggishly into the ravine, without irritating the enemy with return fire. Some bandy-legged commander was yelling, firing his pistol upward and firing at the scuttling soldiers several times, then he caught up with one and another soldier, grabbed them by the collar of their greatcoat, then one at a time, then two at a time, knocked them to the ground, kicked them. But, after lying there for a while, waiting for the frantic commander to roll aside, the soldiers ran further, either clumsily, or quickly crawled into the bushes, into the ravine.

These combat warriors were called “Westernizers” - they scraped them through the villages of Western Ukraine, shaved them, trained them a little and pushed them to the front.

Traveled far and wide by wars, tormented by invasions and devastation, the local land had long ceased to give birth to people of a certain gender, the women here were braver and more generous than the men, their character was more likely to match the fighters, the men were “neither te nor se”, that is, the same a neutral strip that so dangerously and unreliably separates two women's moves: when a groom, crazy with passion, or just a lover, without properly aiming, ends up in a secret place, then this is what is called getting into trouble. In a word, the male part of this nation was and remains half-men, half-Ukrainians, half-Poles, half-Magyars, half-Bessarabians, half-Slovaks and more and more. But no matter who they were, they were unaccustomed to fighting openly, they were afraid of “all enemies”, they could only “be” from around the corner, which they soon successfully proved, after the war they cut out and knocked out each other, exterminating our remaining army and authorities by beating in the back of the head.

Light and bitter

in memory of daughters

my Lydia and Irina.

God! Your world is becoming empty and scary!

N.V. Gogol.

Part one. A SOLDIER IS TREATED

On September fourteenth, one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

This 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 unruly fields, where it remained unharvested. only potatoes, beets and corn, broken by the wind, dangling in rags in withered rags with already broken off cobs, in places black and bald burnt from incendiary bombs and shells.

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

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down with huge mossy stones, seemed to squeeze the side of the mountain, and along this side, clinging to stones and roots, getting tangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all sorts of woody and herbal nonsense, emerging from the stones as a spring, it ran into the ravine was a river, and the further it ran, the faster, fuller and more talkative it became.

Beyond the river, in a nearby field, half of which had already been cleared and was glowing green with reapings sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a stack of sour cream, settled and touched by black on the deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered in almost drooping potato tops, here and there with sunflowers, and here and there with hawkweeds, and thistle between densely littered shaggy bushes.

Having made a sharp turn towards the ravine that was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of the dope, which had grown and was impassably woven in it. Like a maddened river, it noisily flew out of the darkness towards the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed towards the village that was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds that blew through it.

We could barely see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a sharp spire of a church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made another bend and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a Siberian-dark farmstead, roofed with planks, made of thick logs, with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses dotted around the back and gardens. A lot of things had already burned there and something else was smoking sluggishly and sleepily, wafting out smoke and tar fumes.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village in front of us still had to be recaptured, how many of the enemy were there, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat as quickly as possible - no one yet knew.

Our units were digging in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, behind the river, about two hundred meters away from us, the infantry was moving on the field and pretending that they were also digging in, but in fact the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate their bellies potatoes. In the wooden farm, in the morning, in two voices, echoing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and fell silent with a painful groan. The infantry sent a patrol there and profited from fresh meat. Our people also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhitomir region and he said that no one in the world could tar a pig with straw better than him, he would only do sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After at our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, they quite densely and carefully targeted two people with mortars and then began to fire from machine guns, and when the bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest and hit the trunks, then this It seems like a complete fire and nightmare; the situation has become not only complicated, but also alarming.

We all immediately began to work more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer ran towards the infantry along the slope of the field with a pistol in his hand and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung one of his subordinates with his boot, forcing them to turn on the fires. It came to us: “You idiots! Razmundyai! Once...", and the like, familiar to our brother if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

We dug in, gave up communications to the infantry, and sent a signalman with a device there. He said that all the guys here were guys, therefore, warriors who had been swept up in Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having eaten too many potatoes, were sleeping in all sorts of places, and the company commander was going crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we were on guard and in combat readiness.

The cross on the church flickered like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village became more clearly visible with its tops, the sounds of roosters came from it, a motley herd of cows came out into the field and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects across the hills. Behind the village there are hills, turning into hills, then into mountains, then - lying heavily on the ground and resting like a blue hump in the skies blurred by the autumn slurry - the same pass that Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, enter the enemy’s side and rear and, with the help of a deft maneuver, achieve as quickly as possible a bloodless victory. But, having laid down about a hundred thousand lives on these slopes where we were now sitting, the Russian troops went to seek their fortune elsewhere.

Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy, that in this, in “our” war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the “old” generals, again crowded around Duklinsky Pass, trying to cross it, get to Slovakia and with such a deft, bloodless maneuver cut off Hitler’s troops from the Balkans, take Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries out of the war, and end the exhausting war as quickly as possible.

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

Cheerful soldier Viktor Astafiev

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Title: Merry Soldier

About the book “The Jolly Soldier” Viktor Astafiev

The whole truth about the war. Without pathos about heroism and exploits. The truth is as it is. Cruel, destructive, dirty and hungry. Confession of an eyewitness who went through all the circles of hell during the Great Patriotic War.

The book “The Jolly Soldier” by Russian writer and front-line soldier Viktor Astafiev can be considered autobiographical. Having passed the entire Great Patriotic War, the author only at the end of his years decided to put his truth on paper. He was always outraged by how veiledly the war was described in Soviet times, presented as heroic, sacred, victorious. Nobody wanted to present military events objectively. Or censorship didn't allow it.

Already at the end of the 90s, based on the work, it was filmed documentary“The Cheerful Soldier”, in which Viktor Astafiev himself played a leading role. The elderly writer shared his memories and stories of his comrades on camera. The film, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, was difficult to perceive by viewers amazed by the truth, and deservedly collected numerous awards.

From the first pages the book tells about how a soldier fights and gets wounded. The dirt and unsanitary conditions of the hospital, where the wounded are dying in batches. Lack of essential medications. To all this main character tragically experiences the murder of his enemy. What is it like to look into the eyes of the person you killed?

It tells in full detail about the crossing of the Dnieper during the advance of the Red Army. The operation was absolutely unprepared; in the end, in the protagonist’s sector alone, out of 25 thousand soldiers, only a little more than three thousand reached the shore. After all, the price human life was insignificant. The state was not interested in human losses. The main thing is the result, victory at any cost.

It is also difficult to read about the extremely difficult living conditions described by the author during and after the war for his family, loved ones and most people.
Lots and lots of funny soldier humor and everyday life, songs and dances. Maybe that’s why Viktor Astafiev called his book “The Jolly Soldier”? There are obscene words. What would it be like to be at war without them?

The confession entitled “The Cheerful Soldier” touches the soul and teaches you to enjoy every day. After all, the heroes of the book had nothing but pain, fear, and tears. But there was an irresistible will to live, which helped them survive and win.

On our website about books you can download the site for free without registration or read online book“The Jolly Soldier” by Viktor Astafiev in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and real pleasure from reading. Buy full version you can from our partner. Also, here you will find latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginning writers there is a separate section with useful tips and recommendations, interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary crafts.

Quotes from the book “The Jolly Soldier” Viktor Astafiev

Dear God! Why did You give such terrible power into the hands of an unreasonable creature? Why did You put fire in his hands before his mind matured and became stronger? Why did You endow him with such a will that is beyond his humility? Why did You teach him to kill, but did not give him the opportunity to resurrect, so that he could marvel at the fruits of his madness? Here he is, the bastard, both king and serf in one person - let him listen to music worthy of his genius. Drive into this hell ahead of those who, abusing the intelligence given to him, came up with all this, invented it, created it. No, not in one person, but in a herd, a herd: kings, kings, and leaders - for ten days, from palaces, temples, villas, dungeons, party offices - to the Velikokrinitsa bridgehead! So that there is no salt, no bread, so that rats eat off their noses and ears, so that they accept on their own skin what is called war. So that they, too, jumping out onto the edge of a steep bank, on this lifeless surface, as if rising above the ground, would tear their shirt, gray with dirt and lice, and scream like a gray soldier who had just run out of cover and called out: “Yes, kill quickly.” !.."

It stretches on and on through history, and not only Russian, this eternal theme: Why do mortal people, like this talkative soldier, send and send their own kind to slaughter? After all, it turns out that brother betrays brother in Christ, brother kills brother. From the Kremlin itself, from Hitler’s military office, to a dirty trench, to the lowest rank, to the executor of the Tsar’s or Marshal’s will, there stretches a thread along which the order follows for a person to go to his death. And the soldier, even if he is the last creature, also wants to live, he is alone, in the whole world and the wind, and why is it that he, a wretched man who has never seen a king, a leader, or a marshal, should lose his only value - life? And a small particle of this world, called a soldier, must withstand two terrible forces, those in front and those behind, the soldier must contrive, resist, survive, in the blazing fire, and even retain strength in order to the peasant to eliminate the consequences of the destruction they themselves created, to manage to prolong the human race, because it is not the leaders, not the kings who prolong it, but the peasants.

Astafiev V.P. Cheerful soldier

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

God! Your world is becoming empty and scary! N.V. Gogol

Part one

Soldier being treated

On September fourteenth, one thousand nine hundred and forty-four, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.

This 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 unruly fields, where it remained unharvested. only potatoes, beets and corn, broken by the wind, dangling in rags in withered rags with already broken off cobs, in places black and bald burnt from incendiary bombs and shells.

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

The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down with huge mossy stones, seemed to squeeze the side of the mountain, and along this side, clinging to stones and roots, getting tangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all sorts of woody and herbal nonsense, emerging from the stones as a spring, it ran into the ravine was a river, and the further it ran, the faster, fuller and more talkative it became.

Beyond the river, in a nearby field, half of which had already been cleared and was glowing green with reapings sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a stack of sour cream, settled and touched by black on the deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered in almost drooping potato tops, here and there with sunflowers, and here and there with hawkweeds, and thistle between densely littered shaggy bushes.

Having made a sharp turn towards the ravine that was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of the dope, which had grown and was impassably woven in it. Like a maddened river, it noisily flew out of the darkness towards the fields, obsequiously meandered between the hills and rushed towards the village that was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds that blew through it.

We could barely see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a sharp spire of a church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made another bend and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a Siberian-dark farmstead, roofed with planks, made of thick logs, with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses dotted around the back and gardens. A lot of things had already burned there and something else was smoking sluggishly and sleepily, wafting out smoke and tar fumes.

Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village in front of us still had to be recaptured, how many of the enemy were there, what he was thinking - to fight further or to retreat as quickly as possible - no one yet knew.

Our units were digging in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, behind the river, about two hundred meters away from us, the infantry was moving on the field and pretending that they were also digging in, but in fact the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate their bellies potatoes. In the wooden farm, in the morning, in two voices, echoing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and fell silent with a painful groan. The infantry sent a patrol there and profited from fresh meat. Our people also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhitomir region and he said that no one in the world could tar a pig with straw better than him, he would only do sports. But it didn't burn out.

The situation was unclear. After at our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, they quite densely and carefully targeted two people with mortars and then began to fire from machine guns, and when the bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest and hit the trunks, then this It seems like a complete fire and nightmare; the situation has become not only complicated, but also alarming.

We all immediately began to work more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer ran towards the infantry along the slope of the field with a pistol in his hand and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung one of his subordinates with his boot, forcing them to turn on the fires. It came to us: “You idiots! Razmundyai! Once...", and the like, familiar to our brother if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.

We dug in, gave up communications to the infantry, and sent a signalman with a device there. He said that all the guys here were guys, therefore, warriors who had been swept up in Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having eaten too many potatoes, were sleeping in all sorts of places, and the company commander was going crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we were on guard and in combat readiness.

The cross on the church flickered like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village became more clearly visible with its tops, the sounds of roosters came from it, a motley herd of cows came out into the field and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects across the hills. Behind the village there are hills turning into hills, then into mountains, then - lying heavily on the ground and resting like a blue hump in the skies blurred by the autumn slurry - the same pass that Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, enter the enemy’s side and rear and, with the help of a deft maneuver, achieve as quickly as possible a bloodless victory. But, having laid down about a hundred thousand lives on these slopes where we were now sitting, the Russian troops went to seek their fortune elsewhere.

Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy, that in this, in “our” war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the “old” generals, again crowded around Duklinsky Pass, trying to cross it, get to Slovakia and with such a deft, bloodless maneuver cut off Hitler’s troops from the Balkans, take Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries out of the war, and end the exhausting war as quickly as possible.

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

At night several fires lit up ahead of us, a replacement infantry company came and took over