by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] "There was a cemetery in those fir trees. We went in there, there was a grave from the 70s, and next to it were soldiers' boots sticking out of the ground," Zhora points out the sights to the rumble and clank of a well-worn caterpillar tractor.
He himself got into the search at the call of his heart - his own grandfather died not far from here. He came to meet the searchers who work in the Smolensk region, and stayed. He says he got attached, found "his" people, he only regrets that it didn't happen earlier.
And protruding boots are a common sight in these parts, Red Army soldiers who died in the battles of the summer and autumn of 1941 are lying everywhere. They were used for plowing and sowing, for building houses, their bones were thrown into village trash bins, soldiers are lying in the same places where they repaired equipment - at motor and tractor stations.
The settlement has long since disappeared, an open field. But the metal detector and probe clearly show - here are bricks from some building, here are all sorts of plows and gears, and next to it is a pit with those who "gave their lives so that we could live."
The pathos of newspaper editorials and official speeches was always far from the reality, in which there was simply no one to bury the dead - after the war, only women and teenagers remained, surviving with great difficulty.
They earned their workdays by filling trenches and cells for the daily chores of the collective farm while all the men were at the front, and then those who remained alive served out their service. They plowed the land with themselves and the few cattle. There was no one to drag the rotting corpses and there was no reason. And then it somehow became boring, forgotten, there was no time: the plan had to be fulfilled.
Perhaps the villages and farmsteads disappeared without a trace, unable to withstand the freedom that fell upon them after the collapse of the Union, and for that reason too. Because of the injustice towards their soldiers, patiently waiting to be pulled out of the swamp and buried humanely, year after year, decade after decade.
Since there was no time, no desire, no impulse of conscience, someone from above decided that there was no point in fighters being neighbors with such people. That is how the current Great Wasteland came to be, where here and there lie the named and the nameless, "in anatomical order" and beaten by shrapnel, absorbed by the swamp until completely dissolved, torn apart by animals and plows.
Those who died in the offensive battles of the Battle of Smolensk in an attempt to prevent a breakthrough of German troops in the Moscow direction.
And we are shaking on the "armor" through the Smolensk jungle, periodically diving into tasty mud baths to eliminate this injustice. The search team "Height named after Dmitry Syachin" has been working in this area for a very long time, but there is no end in sight. Therefore, on the site of one of the disappeared villages, a base camp appeared with a huge structure for cooking and eating, a bathhouse and other amenities.
For work and equipment.
There is nothing better than a caterpillar here, this has been proven in practice.
The only thing is that you can only ride it from above, where branches with cheerful green foliage are constantly trying to blow you down to the sinful earth. From the last populated area to the place - seven kilometers, for each new party of searchers you have to run either on this very GTS or on the legendary "Karakat", assembled like Frankenstein's monster, from a variety of cars.
Its owner is also a legendary figure - Uncle Vova is a local, a villager, he has been digging practically since infancy and periodically pokes into space with his hand with stubs of fingers, cut off by a circular saw. There, all the ditches were filled with German boxes, here they found a machine gun, and here everything was strewn with mines.
“I defused thousands of them, whatever you want,” he boasts, recalling his youth, when “three-monthers” were sent to demining, young guys who had been voluntarily and forcibly trained in sapper courses.
But Uncle Vova is self-taught, and apart from two fingers on his other hand, torn off by a detonator, he has no losses. Searching is his passion. While his health allowed, he could even wander through the forest for three days in winter, taking an hour's nap by the fire. Like all post-war children, he grew up in the midst of a war that had stuffed the earth with iron and people.
Many people here collected weapons, poached, and stunned fish with TNT. But few were interested in Soviet soldiers. But Uncle Vova (who insists on keeping things simple and calling him simply "Nikolaich") is priceless in this regard.
"Karakat" on huge tractor wheels is completely autonomous, you can sleep in it and there is a stove. Therefore, at any time of the year, with the same passion, a man of many talents and an interesting biography breaks through overgrown roads, cuts down fallen trees, explores new places, with a simple device finds the first fighters, around whom others are sure to be found.
On this basis, Uncle Vova laughingly scolds the city dwellers who come: "I woke up early, cleared my throat, went and dug. I come back - they're asleep. I went again in the other direction and dug. I come back - they're asleep again."
But we honestly get up no later than eight. You can't lie there any longer anyway, the whole forest starts ringing with bird voices with the first rays of the sun, bumblebees hum loudly above the tent and a fresh wind rises, flapping the awning like a sail.
Even though it's Easter and you can't work, it's not considered a sin to look for fighters. So we head out to a well-known place not far from the camp. The squad leader Ilya Podkolzin is racing through the jungle like the swift-footed elf Legolas, Uncle Zhora is stomping behind him, cursing, and I'm already dragging myself behind him, shuffling heavily in my unfamiliar rubber boots.
You can't do without boots here, as well as without tracked vehicles, water stands everywhere after fresh April snowfalls. And in the deep ravine where Ilya leads us, there is a real quagmire of healing black mud, in which you can go knee-deep.
"The events here took place in August 1941. One of the regiments of the 251st Rifle Division was advancing here. The fighters were seeping through the ravines and then heading for a German stronghold located on the hill slightly to the right. Another stronghold was behind the village of Pochinok-Vtoroy. And the Germans took these fortifications for a long time and bloodily, " the commander shows what is here and how. " In practice, the fuss here probably lasted for about a month until they drove ours out of here. We have already raised more than a hundred fighters here on these lines."
The high-rise building in the wilds is not visible, only when you pass it with your feet, it is clear that you are descending. And the Red Army soldiers, under the deadly fire of enemy artillery and mortars, tried to hide in this very ravine, cut by forest streams.
It turned out to be a natural "trench", along the upper edge of which shallow trenches are visible here and there, but all empty. The old excavations are all right along the riverbed, and after wandering through the forest, we still return to this place, poking probes into any holes and just into the ground.
This technology usually means that the fighters have a minimum of metal, and a metal rod with a “bullet” and a cross handle is a classic search tool.
An experienced hand and a trained ear will immediately determine what is knocking - a bone, a piece of iron, wood, metal. Although Zhora immediately tells with sadistic pleasure the story of how the whole team uprooted a century-old spruce, under which there were "absolutely correct" knocks, but it turned out to be a stone and a rotten root.
But this time everything worked out as it should.
While we were wandering along the tributary of the stream, Ilya, who had run off to check the rifle pits somewhere to the side, returned and "snitched" the soldier right at the entrance to our ravine. About forty centimeters of semi-liquid mud, then clay - and there he is. He is lying on his back, his legs folded in a strange way, his head is broken, his femur at the joint has cracked into three parts. Right there, the deadly fragment is brazenly turning red, standing out against the black background - the bastard who took the soldier's life. Deeper into the ground.
The soldier's belongings include a trouser belt, a brand new, unsmoked mess tin under his back, and tarpaulin boots.
The boot tops were amazingly preserved in the swamp, which is a rare case for tarpaulin. The swamp is generally an excellent preservative, any experienced searcher will recall cases when brains or hair were preserved in the remains, here it is appropriate to click your tongue with respect and shake your head.
But there was no medallion or anything signed.
The most interesting thing here is the archaeological clearing. On one side is a slope that you have to bite into to have a place to sit down, on the other is a stream that is trying to add water to the excavation, and as an honorary prize - tons of high-quality sticky mud that does not want to part with the shovel. Then you crawl along it to the banner on which the remains are laid out - in such soil it is easy to lose something without noticing.
And that's how it turned out.
As we trudged back to the camp, having fairly divided the load, I suddenly discovered something hard in my boot. It rolled back and forth, alternately pressing on my heel and then my foot, and just wouldn’t find its place. I had to pull off the rubber to discover to my surprise… the phalanx of my little finger inside. Apparently it had stuck to my gloves and fallen out of the boot.
Have you ever had a human finger rub your foot? Well, I have another one added to my collection of scary stories.
Although a person gets used to everything, and the constant proximity to death eventually ceases to cling. The soldiers who died 84 years ago are practically as alive as the men who are noisily smoking nearby, you don’t expect any threat from them, just as you don’t expect it from your comrades. You can also talk to them, they are the most grateful listeners. And then they are often remembered in conversations around the campfire: “Do you remember that one from the ravine? The one with the glass flask.”
We have an even relationship: you came to help them return from the war as brothers and don't expect any favors in return. Moreover, they have already done their part in full, and we owe them this. And when you are dying from the heat or screaming obscenities, waving off fat horseflies that mercilessly gnaw every living creature, or rolling around up to your ears in mud somewhere - there is always an understanding that it was much harder for them.
That generation had to endure sufferings that were beyond our capacity. Even this torment after death, when soldiers lie unburied for decades, like a heavy seal. Who else is so patient with God?
Perhaps the search movement was inspired by our Lord. He chooses among people those who have a living conscience and directs them to where restless warriors are waiting. An ordinary person sees a forest or a field before him, but the one who is led by an invisible hand sees sinkholes in the ground, sagging trenches, a rotted cartridge case, pulled off the parapet by a plough.
For some reason he is drawn to poke the probe exactly where the bone will knock familiarly or a characteristic depression will appear. And the heart will jump as if for the first time: "There is a fighter!"
And if you're lucky, you're supposed to shout at the top of your lungs: "A medallion!" So that everyone runs to look at the black pencil case or some ampoule with a piece of paper inside, to rejoice, to hope that they'll be able to read it. Although we've seen this many times.
Every spring, people in military gear and rubber boots flock to the Great Wasteland to dig into the ground again and again, digging up soldiers' bones and names. So that injustice can at least be eradicated. And it doesn't matter how many years have passed - the main thing is that everyone is found.