1942 New units transferred to the right bank of the Volga join the army of defenders of Stalingrad. Among them is the battalion of captain Saburov. The Saburites with a fierce attack knock out the fascists from three buildings that have wedged themselves into our defenses. The days and nights of heroic defense of houses that have become impregnable to the enemy begin.
“... On the night of the fourth day, having received an order for Konyukov and several medals for his garrison at the regiment headquarters, Saburov once again made his way into Konyukov’s house and presented the awards. Everyone to whom they were intended was alive, although this rarely happened in Stalingrad. Konyukov asked Saburov to screw on the order - his left hand was cut by a grenade fragment. When Saburov, like a soldier, with a folding knife, cut a hole in Konyukov’s tunic and began to screw on the order, Konyukov, standing at attention, said:
“I think, Comrade Captain, that if an attack is made on them, then the best way to go is straight through my house.” They keep me under siege here, and we are right here on them. How do you like my plan, Comrade Captain?
- Wait. If we have time, we’ll do it,” Saburov said.
– Is the plan correct, Comrade Captain? - Konyukov insisted. – What do you think?
“Correct, correct...” Saburov thought to himself that in case of an attack, Konyukov’s simple plan was really the most correct one.
“Right through my house – and at them,” Konyukov repeated. - With a complete surprise.
He repeated the words “my home” often and with pleasure; a rumor had already reached him through the soldier's mail that this house was called “Konyukov’s house” in reports, and he was proud of it. ..."
On our website you can download the book “Days and Nights” by Konstantin Simonov for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.
Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich
Days and nights
In memory of those who died for Stalingrad
So heavy bastard
crushing glass, forges damask steel.
A. Pushkin
The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue spoke about how Stalingrad burned down.
It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under our feet. The woman’s feet were burned and barefoot, and when she spoke, she raked warm dust to her sore feet with her hand, as if trying to soothe the pain.
Captain Saburov looked at his heavy boots and involuntarily moved back half a step.
He stood silently and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where the train was unloading near the outer houses, right in the steppe.
Beyond the steppe glistened in the sun white stripe salt lake, and all this taken together seemed like the end of the world. Now, in September, here was the last and closest to Stalingrad railroad station. Further to the bank of the Volga we had to walk. The town was called Elton, named after the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words “Elton” and “Baskunchak” he had memorized from school. Once upon a time this was only school geography. And here it is, this Elton: low houses, dust, a remote railway line.
And the woman kept talking and talking about her misfortunes, and, although her words were familiar, Saburov’s heart sank. Previously, they left from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and the women cried in the same way, and in the same way he listened to them with a mixed feeling of shame and fatigue. But here was the bare Trans-Volga steppe, the edge of the world, and in the woman’s words there was no longer reproach, but despair, and there was nowhere to go further along this steppe, where for many miles there were no cities, no rivers, nothing left.
Where did they take you, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable melancholy of the last 24 hours, when he was looking at the steppe from the heated vehicle, was cramped into these two words.
It was very difficult for him at that moment, but, remembering the terrible distance that now separated him from the border, he thought not about how he had come here, but precisely about how he would have to go back. And in his gloomy thoughts there was that special stubbornness characteristic of the Russian man, which did not allow either him or his comrades even once during the entire war to admit the possibility in which this “back” would not happen.
He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the carriages, and he wanted to get across this dust to the Volga as quickly as possible and, having crossed it, feel that there would be no return crossing and that he personal destiny will be decided on the other side, along with the fate of the city. And if the Germans take the city, he will certainly die, and if he does not let them do this, then perhaps he will survive.
And the woman sitting at his feet was still talking about Stalingrad, naming broken and burned streets one after another. Their names, unfamiliar to Saburov, were full of special meaning for her. She knew where and when the houses that were now burned were built, where and when the trees that were now cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it was not about a big city, but about her home, where acquaintances who belonged to things for her personally.
But she didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how rarely, in fact, during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the further the war went, the less often people remembered their abandoned homes and the more often and more stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.
Having wiped away her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman looked around with a long questioning glance at everyone listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:
So much money, so much work!
What work? - someone asked, not understanding the meaning of her words.
“Build everything back,” the woman simply said.
Saburov asked the woman about herself. She said that her two sons had been at the front for a long time and one of them had already been killed, and her husband and daughter probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since then.
Are you going to Stalingrad? - she asked.
“Yes,” answered Saburov, not seeing a military secret in this, because for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could the military train now be unloading in this godforsaken Elton.
Our last name is Klimenko. The husband is Ivan Vasilyevich, and the daughter is Anya. Maybe you’ll meet someone alive somewhere,” the woman said with faint hope.
Maybe I’ll meet you,” Saburov answered as usual.
The battalion was finishing its unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, after drinking a ladle of water from a bucket exposed on the street, headed towards the railway track.
Simonov Konstantin
Days and nights
Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich
Days and nights
In memory of those who died for Stalingrad
So heavy bastard
crushing glass, forges damask steel.
A. Pushkin
The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue spoke about how Stalingrad burned down.
It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under our feet. The woman’s feet were burned and barefoot, and when she spoke, she raked warm dust to her sore feet with her hand, as if trying to soothe the pain.
Captain Saburov looked at his heavy boots and involuntarily moved back half a step.
He stood silently and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where the train was unloading near the outer houses, right in the steppe.
Beyond the steppe, a white strip of salt lake sparkled in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed like the end of the world. Now, in September, here was the last and closest railway station to Stalingrad. Further to the bank of the Volga we had to walk. The town was called Elton, named after the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words “Elton” and “Baskunchak” he had memorized from school. Once upon a time this was only school geography. And here it is, this Elton: low houses, dust, a remote railway line.
And the woman kept talking and talking about her misfortunes, and, although her words were familiar, Saburov’s heart sank. Previously, they left from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and the women cried in the same way, and in the same way he listened to them with a mixed feeling of shame and fatigue. But here was the bare Trans-Volga steppe, the edge of the world, and in the woman’s words there was no longer reproach, but despair, and there was nowhere to go further along this steppe, where for many miles there were no cities, no rivers, nothing left.
Where did they take you, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable melancholy of the last 24 hours, when he was looking at the steppe from the heated vehicle, was cramped into these two words.
It was very difficult for him at that moment, but, remembering the terrible distance that now separated him from the border, he thought not about how he had come here, but precisely about how he would have to go back. And in his gloomy thoughts there was that special stubbornness characteristic of the Russian man, which did not allow either him or his comrades even once during the entire war to admit the possibility in which this “back” would not happen.
He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the carriages, and he wanted to get across this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, feel that there would be no return crossing and that his personal fate would be decided on the other side, along with the fate of the city. And if the Germans take the city, he will certainly die, and if he does not let them do this, then perhaps he will survive.
And the woman sitting at his feet was still talking about Stalingrad, naming broken and burned streets one after another. Their names, unfamiliar to Saburov, were full of special meaning for her. She knew where and when the houses that were now burned were built, where and when the trees that were now cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it was not about a big city, but about her home, where acquaintances who belonged to things for her personally.
But she didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how rarely, in fact, during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the further the war went, the less often people remembered their abandoned homes and the more often and more stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.
Having wiped away her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman looked around with a long questioning glance at everyone listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:
So much money, so much work!
What work? - someone asked, not understanding the meaning of her words.
“Build everything back,” the woman simply said.
Saburov asked the woman about herself. She said that her two sons had been at the front for a long time and one of them had already been killed, and her husband and daughter probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since then.
Are you going to Stalingrad? - she asked.
“Yes,” answered Saburov, not seeing a military secret in this, because for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could the military train now be unloading in this godforsaken Elton.
Our last name is Klimenko. The husband is Ivan Vasilyevich, and the daughter is Anya. Maybe you’ll meet someone alive somewhere,” the woman said with faint hope.
Maybe I’ll meet you,” Saburov answered as usual.
The battalion was finishing its unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, after drinking a ladle of water from a bucket exposed on the street, headed towards the railway track.
The soldiers, sitting on the sleepers, having taken off their boots, were tucking up their foot wraps. Some of them, having saved the rations issued in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. The soldier's rumor, true as usual, spread throughout the battalion that after unloading there would be a march immediately, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some were eating, others were mending torn tunics, and others were having a smoke break.
Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the regimental commander Babchenko was traveling was supposed to arrive any minute, and until then the question remained unresolved: whether Saburov’s battalion would begin the march to Stalingrad, without waiting for the rest of the battalions, or, after spending the night, in the morning, the whole army would immediately move regiment.
Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to go into battle the day after tomorrow.
He knew many of them well by sight and name. These were the “Voronezh”, as he privately called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a jewel because they could be ordered without having to explain unnecessary details.
They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane were flying directly at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could calmly watch their flight. They knew that crawling forward under mortar fire was no more dangerous than remaining in place. They knew that tanks most often crush those running from them and that a German machine gunner firing from two hundred meters always hopes to scare rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but saving soldier truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they would not be so easy to kill.
He had a third of his battalion of such soldiers. The rest were about to see war for the first time. Near one of the carriages, guarding the property that had not yet been loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted Saburov’s attention with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like pikes, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he dashingly took “guard” and continued to look into the captain’s face with a direct, unblinking gaze. In the way he stood, the way he was belted, the way he held the rifle, one could feel that soldierly experience that is only given by years of service. Meanwhile, Saburov, who remembered by sight almost everyone who was with him near Voronezh before the division was reorganized, did not remember this Red Army soldier.
What's the last name? - asked Saburov.
Konyukov,” the Red Army soldier said and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.
Did you take part in the battles?
Yes sir.
Near Przemysl.
Here's how. So they retreated from Przemysl itself?
No way. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.
That's it.
Saburov looked carefully at Konyukov. The soldier's face was serious, almost solemn.
How long have you been in the army during this war? - asked Saburov.
No, first month.
Saburov once again glanced with pleasure at Konyukov’s strong figure and moved on. At the last carriage he met his chief of staff, Lieutenant Maslennikov, who was in charge of the unloading.
Maslennikov reported to him that the unloading would be completed in five minutes, and, looking at his hand square watch, said:
May I, Comrade Captain, check with yours?
Saburov silently took his watch out of his pocket, fastened to the strap with a safety pin. Maslennikov's watch was five minutes behind. He looked with disbelief at Saburov's old silver watch with a cracked glass.
Saburov smiled:
No problem, rearrange it. Firstly, the watch is still father’s, Bure, and secondly, get used to the fact that in war right time always happens to the authorities.
Maslennikov looked at both watches again, carefully brought his own and, holding up his hands, asked permission to be free.
The trip on the train, where he was appointed commandant, and this unloading were Maslennikov’s first front-line task. Here, in Elton, it seemed to him that he already smelled the proximity of the front. He was worried, anticipating a war in which, as it seemed to him, he had shamefully not taken part for a long time. And Saburov carried out everything entrusted to him today with special accuracy and thoroughness.
Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov
Days and nights
In memory of those who died for Stalingrad
...so heavy hammer,
crushing glass, forges damask steel.
A. Pushkin
The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue spoke about how Stalingrad burned down.
It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under our feet. The woman’s feet were burned and bare, and when she spoke, she scooped warm dust onto her sore feet with her hand, as if trying to soothe the pain.
Captain Saburov looked at his heavy boots and involuntarily moved back half a step.
He stood silently and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where the train was unloading near the outer houses, right in the steppe.
Beyond the steppe, a white strip of salt lake sparkled in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed like the end of the world. Now, in September, here was the last and closest railway station to Stalingrad. Further from the bank of the Volga we had to walk. The town was called Elton, named after the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words “Elton” and “Baskunchak” he had memorized since school. Once upon a time this was only school geography. And here it is, this Elton: low houses, dust, a remote railway line.
And the woman kept talking and talking about her misfortunes, and, although her words were familiar, Saburov’s heart sank. Previously, they left from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and the women cried in the same way, and in the same way he listened to them with a mixed feeling of shame and fatigue. But here was the bare Trans-Volga steppe, the edge of the world, and in the woman’s words there was no longer reproach, but despair, and there was nowhere to go further along this steppe, where for many miles there were no cities, no rivers - nothing.
- Where did they take you, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable melancholy of the last 24 hours, when he was looking at the steppe from the van, was cramped into these two words.
It was very difficult for him at that moment, but, remembering the terrible distance that now separated him from the border, he thought not about how he had come here, but precisely about how he would have to go back. And in his gloomy thoughts there was that special stubbornness characteristic of the Russian man, which did not allow either him or his comrades even once during the entire war to admit the possibility in which this “back” would not happen.
He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the carriages, and he wanted to get across this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, feel that there would be no return crossing and that his personal fate would be decided on the other side, along with the fate of the city. And if the Germans take the city, he will certainly die, and if he does not let them do this, then perhaps he will survive.
And the woman sitting at his feet was still talking about Stalingrad, naming broken and burned streets one after another. Their names, unfamiliar to Saburov, were full of special meaning for her. She knew where and when the houses that were now burned were built, where and when the trees that were now cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it was not about a big city, but about her home, where acquaintances who belonged to things for her personally.
But she didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how rarely, in fact, during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the further the war went, the less often people remembered their abandoned homes and the more often and more stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.
Having wiped away her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman looked around with a long questioning glance at everyone listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:
- So much money, so much work!
- What work? – someone asked, not understanding the meaning of her words.
“Build everything back,” the woman said simply.
Saburov asked the woman about herself. She said that her two sons had been at the front for a long time and one of them had already been killed, and her husband and daughter probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since then.
– Are you going to Stalingrad? – she asked.
“Yes,” answered Saburov, not seeing a military secret in this, because for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could the military train now be unloading in this godforsaken Elton.
– Our last name is Klimenko. The husband is Ivan Vasilyevich, and the daughter is Anya. Maybe you’ll meet someone alive somewhere,” the woman said with faint hope.
“Maybe I’ll meet you,” Saburov answered as usual.
The battalion was finishing its unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, after drinking a ladle of water from a bucket exposed on the street, headed towards the railway track.
The soldiers, sitting on the sleepers, having taken off their boots, were tucking up their foot wraps. Some of them, having saved the rations issued in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. The soldier's rumor, true as usual, spread throughout the battalion that after unloading there would be a march immediately, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some were eating, others were mending torn tunics, and others were having a smoke break.
Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the regimental commander Babchenko was traveling was supposed to arrive any minute, and until then the question remained unresolved: whether Saburov’s battalion would begin the march to Stalingrad, without waiting for the rest of the battalions, or, after spending the night, in the morning, the whole army would immediately move regiment.
Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to go into battle the day after tomorrow.
He knew many of them well by sight and name. These were “Voronezh” - that’s what he privately called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a jewel because they could be ordered without having to explain unnecessary details.
They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane were flying directly at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could calmly watch their flight. They knew that crawling forward under mortar fire was no more dangerous than remaining in place. They knew that tanks most often crush those running from them and that a German machine gunner firing from two hundred meters always hopes to scare rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but saving soldier truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they would not be so easy to kill.
He had a third of his battalion of such soldiers. The rest were about to see war for the first time. Near one of the carriages, guarding the property that had not yet been loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted Saburov’s attention with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like pikes, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he dashingly took “guard” and continued to look into the captain’s face with a direct, unblinking gaze. In the way he stood, the way he was belted, the way he held the rifle, one could feel that soldierly experience that is only given by years of service. Meanwhile, Saburov, who remembered by sight almost everyone who was with him near Voronezh before the division was reorganized, did not remember this Red Army soldier.
- What's your last name? – asked Saburov.
“Konyukov,” the Red Army soldier said and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.
– Did you take part in the battles?
- Yes sir.
- Near Przemysl.
- That's how it is. So they retreated from Przemysl itself?
- No way. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.
In memory of those who died for Stalingrad
...so heavy hammer,
crushing glass, forges damask steel.
A. Pushkin
I
The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue spoke about how Stalingrad burned down.
It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under our feet. The woman’s feet were burned and bare, and when she spoke, she scooped warm dust onto her sore feet with her hand, as if trying to soothe the pain.
Captain Saburov looked at his heavy boots and involuntarily moved back half a step.
He stood silently and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where the train was unloading near the outer houses, right in the steppe.
Beyond the steppe, a white strip of salt lake sparkled in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed like the end of the world. Now, in September, here was the last and closest railway station to Stalingrad. Further from the bank of the Volga we had to walk. The town was called Elton, named after the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words “Elton” and “Baskunchak” he had memorized since school. Once upon a time this was only school geography. And here it is, this Elton: low houses, dust, a remote railway line.
And the woman kept talking and talking about her misfortunes, and, although her words were familiar, Saburov’s heart sank. Previously, they left from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and the women cried in the same way, and in the same way he listened to them with a mixed feeling of shame and fatigue. But here was the bare Trans-Volga steppe, the edge of the world, and in the woman’s words there was no longer reproach, but despair, and there was nowhere to go further along this steppe, where for many miles there were no cities, no rivers - nothing.
- Where did they take you, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable melancholy of the last 24 hours, when he was looking at the steppe from the van, was cramped into these two words.
It was very difficult for him at that moment, but, remembering the terrible distance that now separated him from the border, he thought not about how he had come here, but precisely about how he would have to go back. And in his gloomy thoughts there was that special stubbornness characteristic of the Russian man, which did not allow either him or his comrades even once during the entire war to admit the possibility in which this “back” would not happen.
He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the carriages, and he wanted to get across this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, feel that there would be no return crossing and that his personal fate would be decided on the other side, along with the fate of the city. And if the Germans take the city, he will certainly die, and if he does not let them do this, then perhaps he will survive.
And the woman sitting at his feet was still talking about Stalingrad, naming broken and burned streets one after another. Their names, unfamiliar to Saburov, were full of special meaning for her. She knew where and when the houses that were now burned were built, where and when the trees that were now cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it was not about a big city, but about her home, where acquaintances who belonged to things for her personally.
But she didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how rarely, in fact, during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the further the war went, the less often people remembered their abandoned homes and the more often and more stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.
Having wiped away her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman looked around with a long questioning glance at everyone listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:
- So much money, so much work!
- What work? – someone asked, not understanding the meaning of her words.
“Build everything back,” the woman said simply.
Saburov asked the woman about herself. She said that her two sons had been at the front for a long time and one of them had already been killed, and her husband and daughter probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since then.
– Are you going to Stalingrad? – she asked.
“Yes,” answered Saburov, not seeing a military secret in this, because for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could the military train now be unloading in this godforsaken Elton.
– Our last name is Klimenko. The husband is Ivan Vasilyevich, and the daughter is Anya. Maybe you’ll meet someone alive somewhere,” the woman said with faint hope.
“Maybe I’ll meet you,” Saburov answered as usual.
The battalion was finishing its unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, after drinking a ladle of water from a bucket exposed on the street, headed towards the railway track.
The soldiers, sitting on the sleepers, having taken off their boots, were tucking up their foot wraps. Some of them, having saved the rations issued in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. The soldier's rumor, true as usual, spread throughout the battalion that after unloading there would be a march immediately, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some were eating, others were mending torn tunics, and others were having a smoke break.
Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the regimental commander Babchenko was traveling was supposed to arrive any minute, and until then the question remained unresolved: whether Saburov’s battalion would begin the march to Stalingrad, without waiting for the rest of the battalions, or, after spending the night, in the morning, the whole army would immediately move regiment.
Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to go into battle the day after tomorrow.
He knew many of them well by sight and name. These were “Voronezh” - that’s what he privately called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a jewel because they could be ordered without having to explain unnecessary details.
They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane were flying directly at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could calmly watch their flight. They knew that crawling forward under mortar fire was no more dangerous than remaining in place. They knew that tanks most often crush those running from them and that a German machine gunner firing from two hundred meters always hopes to scare rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but saving soldier truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they would not be so easy to kill.
He had a third of his battalion of such soldiers. The rest were about to see war for the first time. Near one of the carriages, guarding the property that had not yet been loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted Saburov’s attention with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like pikes, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he dashingly took “guard” and continued to look into the captain’s face with a direct, unblinking gaze. In the way he stood, the way he was belted, the way he held the rifle, one could feel that soldierly experience that is only given by years of service. Meanwhile, Saburov, who remembered by sight almost everyone who was with him near Voronezh before the division was reorganized, did not remember this Red Army soldier.
- What's your last name? – asked Saburov.
“Konyukov,” the Red Army soldier said and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.
– Did you take part in the battles?
- Yes sir.
- Near Przemysl.
- That's how it is. So they retreated from Przemysl itself?
- No way. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.
- That's it.
Saburov looked carefully at Konyukov. The soldier's face was serious, almost solemn.
- How long have you been in the army during this war? – asked Saburov.
- No, it’s the first month.
Saburov once again glanced with pleasure at Konyukov’s strong figure and moved on. At the last carriage he met his chief of staff, Lieutenant Maslennikov, who was in charge of the unloading.
Maslennikov reported to him that the unloading would be completed in five minutes, and, looking at his hand square watch, said:
- May I, comrade captain, check with yours?
Saburov silently took his watch out of his pocket, fastened to the strap with a safety pin. Maslennikov's watch was five minutes behind. He looked with disbelief at Saburov's old silver watch with a cracked glass.
Saburov smiled:
- It’s okay, rearrange it. Firstly, the watch is still father’s, Bure, and secondly, get used to the fact that in war the authorities always have the right time.
Maslennikov looked at both watches again, carefully brought his own and, holding up his hands, asked permission to be free.
The trip on the train, where he was appointed commandant, and this unloading were Maslennikov’s first front-line task. Here, in Elton, it seemed to him that he already smelled the proximity of the front. He was worried, anticipating a war in which, as it seemed to him, he had shamefully not taken part for a long time. And Saburov completed everything entrusted to him today with special accuracy and thoroughness.
“Yes, yes, go,” Saburov said after a second of silence.
Looking at this ruddy, animated boyish face, Saburov imagined what it would look like in a week, when the dirty, tiring, merciless life of the trenches would fall with its full weight on Maslennikov for the first time.
The small locomotive, puffing, dragged the long-awaited second train onto the siding.
As always, in a hurry, the regiment commander, Lieutenant Colonel Babchenko, jumped off the step of the class carriage while still moving. Having twisted his leg during a jump, he swore and hobbled towards Saburov, who was hurrying towards him.
- How about unloading? – he asked gloomily, without looking into Saburov’s face.
- Finished.
Babchenko looked around. The unloading was indeed completed. But the gloomy appearance and stern tone, which Babchenko considered it his duty to maintain in all conversations with his subordinates, still required him to make some remark to maintain his prestige.
- What you are doing? – he asked abruptly.
- I'm waiting for your orders.
“It would be better if people were fed for now than to wait.”
“In the event that we set off now, I decided to feed the people at the first stop, and in the event that we spend the night, I decided to organize hot food for them here in an hour,” Saburov answered leisurely with that calm logic that he is not particularly keen on. loved Babchenko, who was always in a hurry.
The lieutenant colonel remained silent.
- Would you like to feed me now? – asked Saburov.
- No, feed me at the rest stop. You will go without waiting for the others. Order them to form up.
Saburov called Maslennikov and ordered him to line up the people.
Babchenko remained gloomily silent. He was used to always doing everything himself, he was always in a hurry and often couldn’t keep up.
Strictly speaking, the battalion commander is not obliged to build a marching column himself. But the fact that Saburov entrusted this to someone else, while he himself was now calmly, doing nothing, standing next to him, the regiment commander, angered Babchenko. He loved his subordinates to fuss and run around in his presence. But he could never achieve this from the calm Saburov. Turning away, he began to look at the column under construction. Saburov stood nearby. He knew that the regiment commander did not like him, but he was already used to it and did not pay attention.
They both stood in silence for a minute. Suddenly Babchenko, still not turning to Saburov, said with anger and resentment in his voice:
- No, look what they do to people, you bastards!
Past them, stepping heavily on the sleepers, a line of Stalingrad refugees walked, tattered, emaciated, bandaged with bandages gray with dust.
They both looked in the direction where the regiment was to go. There lay the same bald steppe as here, and only the dust ahead, curling on the hillocks, looked like distant clouds of gunpowder smoke.
– Gathering place in Rybachy. “Go at an accelerated pace and send messengers to me,” said Babchenko with the same gloomy expression on his face and, turning, went to his carriage.
Saburov went out onto the road. The companies have already lined up. While waiting for the march to begin, the command was given: “At ease.” The rows were talking quietly. Walking towards the head of the column past the second company, Saburov again saw the red-mustachioed Konyukov: he was animatedly telling something, waving his arms.
- Battalion, listen to my command!
The column started moving. Saburov walked ahead. The distant dust hovering over the steppe again seemed like smoke to him. However, perhaps the steppe was actually burning ahead.
- In contact with 0
- Google+ 0
- OK 0
- Facebook 0
