The last Ivan. Unpublished. Part 3

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Bronze bust of Ivan Drozdov in the Literary Hall of the Main Museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow.

- I'll tell you simply. This question arises for many: what is the matter, why were such young people at the head of large units? The thing is that we graduated from college. We could command this battery, not only, therefore, educate young men. We could make calculations when shooting. Who else could give them? Here, I was at the beginning a platoon leader. During the battle, the big one did not see how the regiment commander arrived. He buried himself in my trench, and I stood in the middle, and, as a rule, I stood without a helmet.

- Not because I am so brave, but because when the battery commander stands in the middle without a helmet and commands, the whole battery works. As soon as the battery commander walked back and forth, everyone began to stir. They are afraid, because fear …

- People are afraid, because shells explode, fragments whistle, machine guns and bombs hit from planes. All the same, it is on fire … The battery is front-line, it is still on the guard of the city, you know. And so, I am in command of the battery, and the regiment commander asks the range finder: "Where is the battery commander?" And she says: "In touch." But what a connection when such a fight! And he is in a dugout, where there are walkie-talkies and so on, so that he does not get hurt. Well, when the fight ended, he said nothing. I arrived at the regiment and handed over the package: to hand over the battery to him, to take it for me. He was 36 years old, I was 20. He saw: I give calculations, I stand, do you understand? That is why the battery commanders were so young. Incidentally, an interesting detail, the commander of the rangefinder squad was Nina Abrosimova. She was the daughter of the commander of the front artillery, Lieutenant General Abrosimov.

- It's on our battery. The regimental commander often came to see how she was being offended.

- 32 women. Yes. What is a battery, you say? The battery is all specialists, some are gunners, others are loaders, and others are on our device. For example, on the PUAZ O-3 anti-aircraft fire control device, 12 women worked on it, 4 women worked on the long section, and on others. When the fight ended, I first of all went to the girls. They are all 17 to 18 years old. I go to the girls … If it was a tough fight, they all cry, wiping away their tears with handkerchiefs.

- It was different. Here they had a nervous permission - they were crying. I must admit that a lot has already passed here, I had a nervous resolution, I felt sick. And one day I got eczema on my leg. And when I went to the doctor, Major Weizmann, we had a doctor, I asked her: "Where did this come from?" And she says that it is from a nervous strain. After all, when you are standing, you cannot show anyone that you are cowardly, and you cannot hide the whole fight, you won’t bend your head … Nerves are the same as everyone else's … Well, I didn’t tell anyone that I was sick. Anakhovich we had a medical assistant. I tell him:

- Efim, don't talk to anyone here, but why is it that makes me feel sick after the battle?

- It's very simple, comrade battalion commander, here we have very large nerve plexuses in the abdomen, and when you stand like this for 40 minutes, there is a lot of tension. It's okay, it will pass, - he says.

And the girls were crying, and I went all to them after the fight and told them all sorts of words that: “You are great, girls (otherwise the guys called them), you gave accurate calculations. You see how many tanks and infantry we killed. Why should you cry, you need to rejoice."

- Reaction … Still, they were weaker. The tank is moving, it's a terrible thing, it has a cannon in front of it.

- Not that they got lost, they worried more. That's when you have to work, they work great.

- We had 132 people. We had six people from the Asian republics, we had two Balts, four Jews. Sometimes they ask me: "And what did the Jews do with you?" Well, I say: "I must tell you that they got the same as we did." When they are thrashing with shells and other things, you can't hide much.

- I'll tell you now. Here is Anakhovich named. He is a paramedic. Sits, and you can't see him, and you can't hear him. And why should he stick out? The second person is Polina Rubinchik, sergeant, Komsomol organizer of the battery.

- Chosen. Chosen and respected. And, by the way, the granddaughter of a Moscow rabbi. And when I lived in Moscow and studied at the academy, and went to the skating rink, one day she grabbed me: "There you are, our battalion commander." And then he says: "Let's go, today I will introduce you to my grandfather." So I was at her grandfather's dacha. And he told them how good Polina was. She had a medal of courage.

By the way, if people felt that they would be awarded with medals, they often said: "Comrade battalion commander, I would like a medal for courage," they loved her very much. It is large and silver.

Well, here are two, now the third. It was Captain Friedman. He was the head of SON-3K. What is SON-3K? This is a gun guidance station, a radar. Mind you, the radars were already on battery. Well, of course, they weren't as perfect as they were later. By the way, this radar never helped us in any way. But the radar was "attached", and the commander of this station was Captain Friedman. He was my subordinate. And the fourth person is Lieutenant Demchenko, a gun technician. They all belonged to the elite.

- There were Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians. Out of 130 people, well, I can't give you an exact count now, well, somewhere between 106-104 people are Russians.

- Yes, mostly … The officers were all Russian. I don’t know if this can be said, they may not understand me, but I can say that people from the Caucasian and Central Asian republics didn’t work with our guns, with devices, because their level of literacy and education was always much lower than that of our Slavic guys. This is not because I myself am a Slav. It was so. I don’t know if it’s by nature, or it’s their level of study, it was weaker. But they were there as chauffeurs, cooks, well, we had a lot of such housekeepers.

- Well, there were "mostly" us in the country.

- But all the same, for the sake of justice, I will say that everyone fought in general great.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell you. You probably know that I worked for a long time at Izvestia, and then was the editor-in-chief at the Sovremennik publishing house, I was the editor of the magazine for the young in Moscow, and, of course, even on duty, I had to follow the literature, literature about war. I knew the main books about the war. These are Bubennov's books "White Birches", these are Vasily Sokolov's books "Invasion and Collapse", Gonchar's books, Bondarev's books, Shevtsov's books. These books that painted the war - I liked them. For me Bubennov's novel "White Birches" is a very strong novel. And maybe that is why I didn’t get down to the topic of war for a long time, because my artistic method includes one principled provision: I believe that you shouldn’t repeat yourself in literature. If you write, then write new, epigonism is unacceptable here. And so, whenever you think that you need to write about the war, these best books come up. Leonov wrote about the war, you know. And it is somehow taken aback: I will not be able to write at the level, and say something new. But, they say, a coward doesn't play hockey. Not always to be afraid, to be afraid? During the war, I was at the beginning a pilot, then an artilleryman, I went through the whole war. How so? I already had a lot of novels, 7 or 8, before starting the novel about the war. I decided to write about the war, a novel. And I’ll tell you what this novel is. Of course, I need to tell you briefly. But first, let's read the letter that I received 3-4 days ago from readers.

Then the veteran writes:

- Here you are, three days ago I received this letter - this is an amazing letter. Why amazing? I will say now, now it is already possible, I have been for many years, and I must speak only the truth. Then there was such a state during the war that hatred for the Germans did not lie on the soul, did not lie down. They bring prisoners to our battery: Major, Oberst and Sergeant. Their foreman is leading. I say: "Come on, come to us."The officers and I are having lunch. I invite them to sit down with us to dine, and we start a conversation, do you understand? I talk to them, well, as if I had not fought with them. I don’t know what it is. Here I say to the major:

- "Why don't you eat borscht?" - we gave them borscht.

And he says:

- He is fat, but we do not eat fat. That is, not all of us, others eat borscht, and even with pleasure, but those who are over 30. Because we have some kind of gastritis in our stomach.

I say:

-What, at all or what? What did you get it from?

And he says:

- Yes, you know, we drink beer, and our beer is made from potato tops, not what you have - from bread. Therefore, we have drunk a person for ten years - gastritis.

And I tell him:

- So why are you with a sick belly climbed on us? We have a soldier - he will gobble up anything, he has no gastritis.

He asks: "What will they do to us, kaput?" “No,” I say, “we are sending prisoners to Siberia, there are many women and girls, get married, stay and you will like it.” Later I received a comment from the authorized SMERSH: "Why are you talking to the enemy like that?" And I say: “Why, he is a prisoner. Why not feed him? Why am I not a man or what?"

- But that's another matter. The Germans acted differently, differently. This is a difficult, very difficult question. But I tell you, this hatred that the newspapers instilled in us … I don't know how others, of course, I hated them as an enemy, hitting them. But one day I was ordered from the headquarters: the car is traveling with officers, take aim at it and, therefore, shoot it. I looked through the rangefinder, and a truck was really driving, they were singing, about forty people, and all the young people, now there is only one shell - and they are not. And then I think: so they are going to us, to us. I think maybe we can keep them alive. Despite the fact that there was some risk after all. Well, what about the battery if they have pistols. In general, I ordered them to come closer, and they opened fire on the wheels, downward, and began to dig the earth under them. Well, they, of course, scattered. And then they surrendered. That is, we kept everyone alive. It was a pity to take 20-year-old guys like me and destroy them with one shell.

- When I began to prepare for a new novel, I read a lot about the Aryans, the Aryans, I saw that we, it turns out, had a common root. There, in the war, I was surprised that their faces looked like us. The figure, the face - everything is very similar. When I began to study materials about the origin of Russia, Russians, I see that there were Aryans, mixed like peoples in one pot, then spread, everything else. So, maybe, here is the call of distant blood, that some kind of kinship of souls. And in this letter, which we have just read, these conclusions of mine are confirmed …

- Yes. And what can I say in a nutshell? You cannot tell about the novel in a nutshell, but I will say that in this novel I decided to ascend, as it were, by helicopter to a great height, from there to look at the war: how it went not only with us, but also with them. I began to study. I came across an interesting article in some newspaper "Baroness Nastya" that we had a scout who became a baroness and even now lives there, and everyone knows that she is a scout, but does not want to leave - children, grandchildren. I even went there to study, I studied this town, I was in castles. And I saw a picture of a most interesting, rich and dramatic life. Therefore, I showed the war in a complex: and how they fought, and how we, with us, and with them. It is difficult, but I tried to do it.

- And they saved Budapest!

- Let people know, and for a long time they will be surprised by the fact that it was a great battle for Budapest, which preserved the city, preserved all 13 unique bridges, all palaces, the entire city was preserved. When I started writing a novel about the war, I already knew that at the time when we were finishing the war, the Great Patriotic War with Germany, our enemies were hatching a new war. The one that is coming now. It was already called informational then, and even then they pinned their hopes on the fifth column. They saw that the Russian people in frontal contact, that is, in open battle, cannot be defeated, they must be defeated with a lie, which they did.

Ivan Drozdov's website