It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under their feet. The woman's feet were burned and barefoot, and when she spoke, she used her hand to scoop up warm dust to the inflamed feet, as if trying to soothe the pain.

Captain Saburov glanced at his heavy boots and involuntarily took half a step back.

He silently stood and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where, at the outermost houses, right in the steppe, the train was unloading.

Behind the steppe, a white stripe of a salt lake shone in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed to be the end of the world. Now, in September, there was the last and nearest railway station to Stalingrad. Further from the bank of the Volga had to go on foot. The town was called Elton, after the name of the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words "Elton" and "Baskunchak" memorized from school. Once it 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 ached. Before they went from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and women wept in the same way, and he listened to them in the same way with a mixed feeling of shame and weariness. But here was the Volga naked steppe, the end of the world, and in the words of the woman there was no longer a 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 drive it, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable longing of the last day, when he looked at the steppe from the car, was embarrassed by 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 about how he would have to go back. And there was in his gloomy thoughts that special stubbornness, characteristic of a Russian person, which did not allow either him or his comrades, even once during the whole war, to admit the possibility that there would be no “return”.

He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the wagons, and he wanted to get through this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, to 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, one by one naming the broken and burned streets. Unfamiliar to Saburov, their names were filled with special meaning for her. She knew where and when the now burnt houses were built, where and when the trees cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it were not a big city, but her house, where friends who belonged to her personal things.

But she just didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how, in fact, rarely during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the longer the war went on, the less often people remembered their abandoned houses and the more often and stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.

Wiping her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman cast a long, questioning glance over all who were listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:

How much money, how much work!

– What works? 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, while her husband and daughter had probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since.

- Are you in Stalingrad? she asked.

“Yes,” Saburov replied, not seeing a military secret in this, for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could a military echelon be unloading now in this God-forgotten Elton.

- Our surname is Klimenko. Husband - Ivan Vasilyevich, and daughter - Anya. Maybe you will meet somewhere alive, - the woman said with a faint hope.

“Maybe I’ll meet,” Saburov answered as usual.

The battalion had finished unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, having drunk a ladle of water from a bucket put out on the street, went to the railway track.

The fighters, sitting on the sleepers, took off their boots, tucked footcloths. Some of them, having saved the rations given out in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. A true, as usual, soldier's rumor spread through the battalion that after unloading, a march was immediately ahead, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some ate, others repaired torn tunics, others smoked.

Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the commander of the regiment Babchenko was traveling was supposed to come up 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 regiment.

Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to fight the day after tomorrow.

He knew many by face and by name. They were "Voronezh" - this is how he called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a treasure, because they could be ordered without explaining unnecessary details.

They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane flew right at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could safely watch their flight. They knew that it was no more dangerous to crawl forward under mortar fire than to remain lying still. They knew that tanks most often crush those who run away from them, and that a German submachine gunner, shooting from two hundred meters, always expects to frighten rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but salutary soldierly truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they were not so easy to kill.

He had a third of the battalion of such soldiers. The rest were to see the war for the first time. At one of the wagons, guarding the property not yet loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted the attention of Saburov with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like peaks, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he famously took "on guard" and with a direct, unblinking look continued to look into the face of the captain. In the way he stood, how he was belted, how he held his rifle, one could feel that soldier's experience, which is given only 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? Saburov asked.

“Konyukov,” the Red Army man rapped out and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.

- Did you participate in battles?

- Yes sir.

- Near Przemysl.

- Here's how. So, they retreated from Przemysl itself?

- Not at all. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.

- That's it.

Saburov looked attentively at Konyukov. The soldier's face was serious, almost solemn.

- And in this war for a long time in the army? Saburov asked.

No, the first month.

Saburov took another look at Konyukov's strong figure with pleasure and moved on. At the last carriage, he met his chief of staff, Lieutenant Maslennikov, who was in charge of the unloading.

In memory of those who died for Stalingrad

... so heavy mlat,
crushing glass, forging damask steel.

A. Pushkin

I

The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue told about how Stalingrad burned down.

It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under their feet. The woman's feet were burned and barefoot, and when she spoke, she used her hand to scoop up warm dust to the inflamed feet, as if trying to soothe the pain.

Captain Saburov glanced at his heavy boots and involuntarily took half a step back.

He silently stood and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where, at the outermost houses, right in the steppe, the train was unloading.

Behind the steppe, a white stripe of a salt lake shone in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed to be the end of the world. Now, in September, there was the last and nearest railway station to Stalingrad. Further from the bank of the Volga had to go on foot. The town was called Elton, after the name of the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words "Elton" and "Baskunchak" memorized from school. Once it 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 ached. Before they went from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and women wept in the same way, and he listened to them in the same way with a mixed feeling of shame and weariness. But here was the Volga naked steppe, the end of the world, and in the words of the woman there was no longer a 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 drive it, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable longing of the last day, when he looked at the steppe from the car, was embarrassed by 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 about how he would have to go back. And there was in his gloomy thoughts that special stubbornness, characteristic of a Russian person, which did not allow either him or his comrades, even once during the whole war, to admit the possibility that there would be no “return”.

He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the wagons, and he wanted to get through this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, to 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, one by one naming the broken and burned streets. Unfamiliar to Saburov, their names were filled with special meaning for her. She knew where and when the now burnt houses were built, where and when the trees cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it were not a big city, but her house, where friends who belonged to her personal things.

But she just didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how, in fact, rarely during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the longer the war went on, the less often people remembered their abandoned houses and the more often and stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.

Wiping her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman cast a long, questioning glance over all who were listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:

How much money, how much work!

– What works? 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, while her husband and daughter had probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since.

- Are you in Stalingrad? she asked.

“Yes,” Saburov replied, not seeing a military secret in this, for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could a military echelon be unloading now in this God-forgotten Elton.

- Our surname is Klimenko. Husband - Ivan Vasilyevich, and daughter - Anya. Maybe you will meet somewhere alive, - the woman said with a faint hope.

“Maybe I’ll meet,” Saburov answered as usual.

The battalion had finished unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, having drunk a ladle of water from a bucket put out on the street, went to the railway track.

The fighters, sitting on the sleepers, took off their boots, tucked footcloths. Some of them, having saved the rations given out in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. A true, as usual, soldier's rumor spread through the battalion that after unloading, a march was immediately ahead, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some ate, others repaired torn tunics, others smoked.

Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the commander of the regiment Babchenko was traveling was supposed to come up 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 regiment.

Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to fight the day after tomorrow.

He knew many by face and by name. They were "Voronezh" - this is how he called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a treasure, because they could be ordered without explaining unnecessary details.

They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane flew right at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could safely watch their flight. They knew that it was no more dangerous to crawl forward under mortar fire than to remain lying still. They knew that tanks most often crush those who run away from them, and that a German submachine gunner, shooting from two hundred meters, always expects to frighten rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but salutary soldierly truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they were not so easy to kill.

He had a third of the battalion of such soldiers. The rest were to see the war for the first time. At one of the wagons, guarding the property not yet loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted the attention of Saburov with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like peaks, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he famously took "on guard" and with a direct, unblinking look continued to look into the face of the captain. In the way he stood, how he was belted, how he held his rifle, one could feel that soldier's experience, which is given only 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? Saburov asked.

“Konyukov,” the Red Army man rapped out and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.

- Did you participate in battles?

- Yes sir.

- Near Przemysl.

- Here's how. So, they retreated from Przemysl itself?

- Not at all. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.

- That's it.

Saburov looked attentively at Konyukov. The soldier's face was serious, almost solemn.

- And in this war for a long time in the army? Saburov asked.

No, the first month.

Saburov took another look at Konyukov's strong figure with pleasure 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-held square watch, he said:

- Allow me, comrade captain, to check with yours?

Saburov silently took out his watch from 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 cracked glass.

Saburov smiled:

- Nothing, change it. Firstly, the clock is still fatherly, Bure, and secondly, get used to the fact that in war the authorities always have the right time.

Maslennikov once again looked at those and other watches, carefully brought his own and, having saluted, asked permission to be free.

The trip in the echelon, where he was appointed commandant, and this unloading were the first front-line task for Maslennikov. Here, in Elton, it seemed to him that he already smelled of the proximity of the front. He was excited, anticipating a war in which, as it seemed to him, he shamefully long did not take part. And Saburov fulfilled everything entrusted to him today with special accuracy and thoroughness.

“Yes, yes, go,” Saburov said after a moment of silence.

Looking at this ruddy, lively boyish face, Saburov imagined what it would be like in a week, when the dirty, tedious, merciless trench life would first fall upon Maslennikov with all its weight.

A small steam locomotive, puffing, dragged the long-awaited second echelon onto the siding.

Hurrying as always, the regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Babchenko, jumped off the footboard of the cool carriage while still on the move. Twisting his leg as he jumped, he cursed and hobbled towards Saburov, who was hurrying towards him.

How about unloading? he asked frowningly, without looking into Saburov's face.

- Finished.

Babchenko looked around. The unloading was indeed completed. But the gloomy look and strict tone, which Babchenko considered it his duty to maintain in all conversations with his subordinates, demanded from him even now that he make some kind of remark in order to maintain his prestige.

- What you are doing? he asked curtly.

- I'm waiting for your orders.

- It would be better if people were fed for now than to wait.

“In the event that we start now, I decided to feed people at the first halt, 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, which he especially does not loved Babchenko, who was always in a hurry.

The lieutenant colonel said nothing.

- Would you like to feed now? Saburov asked.

- No, feed at a halt. Go without waiting for the others. Order to build.

Saburov called Maslennikov and ordered him to line up the men.

Babchenko was gloomily silent. He was used to always doing everything himself, he was always in a hurry and often did not keep up.

Strictly speaking, the battalion commander is not obliged to build a marching column himself. But the fact that Saburov entrusted this to another, while he himself was now calmly, doing nothing, was standing next to him, the regiment commander, annoyed Babchenko. He liked 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 regimental commander did not like him, but he was already used to this and did not pay attention.

They both stood silent 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, heavily stepping over the sleepers, the Stalingrad refugees walked in a file, ragged, exhausted, bandaged with dust-gray bandages.

They both looked in the direction in which the regiment was to go. There lay the same as here, the bald steppe, and only the dust in front, curled on the mounds, looked like distant puffs of gunpowder smoke.

- Place of collection in Rybachy. Go on an accelerated march and send messengers to me, ”Babchenko said with the same gloomy expression on his face and, turning, went to his car.

Saburov took to the road. The companies have already lined up. In anticipation of the start of the march, the command was given: "At ease." The ranks were talking quietly. Walking towards the head of the column past the second company, Saburov again saw the red-moustached Konyukov: he was talking animatedly, waving his arms.

- Battalion, listen to my command!

The column moved. Saburov walked ahead. The distant dust that swirled over the steppe again seemed to him like smoke. However, perhaps, in fact, the steppe was burning ahead.

II

Twenty days ago, on a sweltering August day, the bombers of Richthofen's air squadron hovered over the city in the morning. It is difficult to say how many there were in reality and how many times they bombed, flew away and returned again, but in just one day, observers counted two thousand aircraft over the city.

The city was on fire. It burned through the night, all the next day, and all the next night. And although on the first day of the fire the fighting went on for another sixty kilometers from the city, at the Don crossings, but it was from this fire that the great battle of Stalingrad began, because both the Germans and we - one in front of us, the other behind us - from that moment saw the glow Stalingrad, and all the thoughts of both fighting sides were from now on, like a magnet, attracted to the burning city.

On the third day, when the fire began to die down, that special, painful smell of ashes was established in Stalingrad, which then did not leave it all the months of the siege. The smells of burnt iron, charred wood, and scorched bricks mingled into one thing, stupefying, heavy, and acrid. Soot and ashes quickly settled to the ground, but as soon as the lightest wind from the Volga blew, this black dust began to swirl along the burned streets, and then it seemed that the city was smoky again.

The Germans continued bombing, and here and there new fires flared up in Stalingrad, which no longer affected anyone. They ended relatively quickly, because, having burned down several new houses, the fire soon reached the previously burnt streets and, finding no food for itself, went out. But the city was so huge that there was always something on fire somewhere, and everyone was already used to this constant glow as a necessary part of the night landscape.

On the tenth day after the start of the fire, the Germans came so close that their shells and mines began to burst more and more often in the center of the city.

On the twenty-first day, the moment came when it might seem to a person who believed only in military theory that it was useless and even impossible to defend the city any longer. To the north of the city, the Germans reached the Volga, to the south they approached it. The city, which stretched for sixty-five kilometers in length, was nowhere more than five in width, and along almost its entire length the Germans had already occupied the western outskirts.

The cannonade, which began at seven in the morning, did not stop until sunset. To the uninitiated, who got to the headquarters of the army, it would seem that everything is going well and that, in any case, the defenders still have a lot of strength. Looking at the headquarters map of the city, where the location of the troops was plotted, he would have seen that this relatively small area was densely covered with the numbers of divisions and brigades standing on the defensive. He could have heard the orders given by telephone to the commanders of these divisions and brigades, and it might have seemed to him that all he had to do was follow all these orders exactly, and success would undoubtedly be assured. In order to really understand what was happening, this uninitiated observer would have to get to the divisions themselves, which were marked on the map in the form of such neat red semicircles.

Most of the divisions retreating from behind the Don, exhausted in two months of battles, were now incomplete battalions in terms of the number of bayonets. There were still quite a few people in the headquarters and in the artillery regiments, but in the rifle companies every fighter was on the account. In recent days, in the rear units they took everyone who was not absolutely necessary there. Telephonists, cooks, chemists were put at the disposal of regimental commanders and, of necessity, became infantry. But although the chief of staff of the army, looking at the map, knew perfectly well that his divisions were no longer divisions, but the size of the areas they occupied still required that they should fall on their shoulders exactly the task that should fall on the shoulders of the division. And, knowing that this burden was unbearable, all the chiefs, from the largest to the smallest, nevertheless placed this unbearable burden on the shoulders of their subordinates, for there was no other way out, and it was still necessary to fight.

Before the war, the commander of the army would probably have laughed if he had been told that the day would come when the entire mobile reserve that he would have at his disposal would amount to several hundred people. And yet today it was just like that ... Several hundred submachine gunners, planted on trucks - that was all that he could quickly transfer from one end of the city to the other at the critical moment of the breakthrough.

On a large and flat hill of Mamaev Kurgan, some kilometer from the front line, in dugouts and trenches, the command post of the army was located. The Germans stopped the attacks, either postponing them until dark, or deciding to rest until the morning. The situation in general, and this silence in particular, forced us to assume that in the morning there would be an indispensable and decisive assault.

"We'd have lunch," said the adjutant, squeezing his way into the little dugout where the chief of staff and a member of the Military Council were sitting over a map. They both looked at each other, then at the map, then back at each other. If the adjutant had not reminded them that they needed to have lunch, they might have sat over it for a long time. They alone knew how dangerous the situation really was, and although everything that could be done had already been foreseen and the commander himself went to the division to check the fulfillment of his orders, it was still difficult to break away from the map - I wanted to miraculously find out on this sheet of paper some new, unprecedented possibilities.

“Dine like that, dine,” said Matveev, a member of the Military Council, a cheerful person who loved to eat in those cases when, amid the hustle and bustle of the headquarters, there was time for this.

They took to the air. It began to get dark. Below, to the right of the mound, against the background of a leaden sky, like a herd of fiery animals, Katyusha shells flashed by. The Germans were preparing for the night, launching the first white rockets into the air, marking their front line.

The so-called green ring passed through Mamayev Kurgan. It was started in the thirtieth year by the Stalingrad Komsomol members and for ten years surrounded their dusty and stuffy city with a belt of young parks and boulevards. The top of Mamayev Kurgan was also lined with thin ten-year-old linden trees.

Matthew looked around. This warm autumn evening was so good, it suddenly became so quiet all around, so smelled of the last summer freshness from the lime trees beginning to turn yellow, that it seemed absurd to him to sit in a dilapidated hut where the dining room was located.

“Tell them to bring the table here,” he turned to the adjutant, “we will dine under the lime trees.”

A rickety table was taken out of the kitchen, covered with a tablecloth, and two benches were placed.

“Well, General, sit down,” Matveev said to the chief of staff. “It’s been a long time since you and I dined under the lime trees, and it’s unlikely that we will have to soon.

And he looked back at the burnt city.

The adjutant brought vodka in glasses.

“Do you remember, General,” Matveev continued, “once in Sokolniki, near the labyrinth, there were such cells with a living fence made of trimmed lilacs, and in each there was a table and benches. And the samovar was served ... More and more families came there.

- Well, there were mosquitoes there, - the chief of staff, who was not inclined to lyrics, interjected, - not like here.

“But there is no samovar here,” said Matveyev.

- But there are no mosquitoes. And the labyrinth there really was such that it was difficult to get out.

Matveev looked over his shoulder at the city spread out below and grinned:

- Labyrinth...

Below, the streets converged, diverged and tangled up, on which, among the decisions of many human destinies, one big fate had to be decided - the fate of the army.

In the semi-darkness the adjutant grew up.

- They arrived from the left bank from Bobrov. It was evident from his voice that he ran here and was out of breath.

- Where are they? Rising, Matveev asked curtly.

- With me! Comrade Major! called the adjutant.

A tall figure, barely visible in the darkness, appeared next to him.

- Have you met? Matthew asked.

- We met. Colonel Bobrov ordered to report that they would now begin the crossing.

“Good,” said Matveyev, and sighed deeply and with relief.

The fact that the last hours worried him, and the chief of staff, and everyone around him, was decided.

Has the Commander returned yet? he asked the adjutant.

- Look for the divisions where he is, and report that Bobrov met.

III

Colonel Bobrov was sent early in the morning to meet and hurry up the very division in which Saburov commanded the battalion. Bobrov met her at noon, not reaching Srednyaya Akhtuba, thirty kilometers from the Volga. And the first person he spoke to was Saburov, who was walking at the head of the battalion. Asking Saburov for the number of the division and learning from him that its commander was following behind, the colonel quickly got into the car, ready to move.

“Comrade Captain,” he said to Saburov and looked him in the face with tired eyes, “I don’t need to explain to you why your battalion should be at the crossing by eighteen o’clock.

And without saying a word, he slammed the door.

At six o'clock in the evening, returning, Bobrov found Saburov already on the shore. After a tiring march, the battalion came to the Volga out of order, stretching out, but already half an hour after the first fighters saw the Volga, Saburov managed, in anticipation of further orders, to place everyone along the ravines and slopes of the hilly coast.

When Saburov, waiting for the crossing, sat down to rest on the logs lying near the water, Colonel Bobrov sat down next to him and offered to smoke.

They smoked.

- Well, how is it? Saburov asked and nodded towards the right bank.

“Difficult,” said the Colonel. “It's difficult…” And for the third time he repeated in a whisper: “It's difficult,” as if there was nothing to add to this exhaustive word.

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Konstantin Simonov
Days and nights

In memory of those who died for Stalingrad

... so heavy mlat,
crushing glass, forging damask steel.

A. Pushkin

I

The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue told about how Stalingrad burned down.

It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under their feet. The woman's feet were burned and barefoot, and when she spoke, she used her hand to scoop up warm dust to the inflamed feet, as if trying to soothe the pain.

Captain Saburov glanced at his heavy boots and involuntarily took half a step back.

He silently stood and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where, at the outermost houses, right in the steppe, the train was unloading.

Behind the steppe, a white stripe of a salt lake shone in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed to be the end of the world. Now, in September, there was the last and nearest railway station to Stalingrad. Further from the bank of the Volga had to go on foot. The town was called Elton, after the name of the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words "Elton" and "Baskunchak" memorized from school. Once it 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 ached. Before they went from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and women wept in the same way, and he listened to them in the same way with a mixed feeling of shame and weariness. But here was the Volga naked steppe, the end of the world, and in the words of the woman there was no longer a 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 drive it, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable longing of the last day, when he looked at the steppe from the car, was embarrassed by 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 about how he would have to go back. And there was in his gloomy thoughts that special stubbornness, characteristic of a Russian person, which did not allow either him or his comrades, even once during the whole war, to admit the possibility that there would be no “return”.

He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the wagons, and he wanted to get through this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, to 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, one by one naming the broken and burned streets. Unfamiliar to Saburov, their names were filled with special meaning for her. She knew where and when the now burnt houses were built, where and when the trees cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it were not a big city, but her house, where friends who belonged to her personal things.

But she just didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how, in fact, rarely during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the longer the war went on, the less often people remembered their abandoned houses and the more often and stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.

Wiping her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman cast a long, questioning glance over all who were listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:

How much money, how much work!

– What works? 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, while her husband and daughter had probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since.

- Are you in Stalingrad? she asked.

“Yes,” Saburov replied, not seeing a military secret in this, for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could a military echelon be unloading now in this God-forgotten Elton.

- Our surname is Klimenko. Husband - Ivan Vasilyevich, and daughter - Anya. Maybe you will meet somewhere alive, - the woman said with a faint hope.

“Maybe I’ll meet,” Saburov answered as usual.

The battalion had finished unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, having drunk a ladle of water from a bucket put out on the street, went to the railway track.

The fighters, sitting on the sleepers, took off their boots, tucked footcloths. Some of them, having saved the rations given out in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. A true, as usual, soldier's rumor spread through the battalion that after unloading, a march was immediately ahead, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some ate, others repaired torn tunics, others smoked.

Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the commander of the regiment Babchenko was traveling was supposed to come up 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 regiment.

Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to fight the day after tomorrow.

He knew many by face and by name. They were "Voronezh" - this is how he called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a treasure, because they could be ordered without explaining unnecessary details.

They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane flew right at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could safely watch their flight. They knew that it was no more dangerous to crawl forward under mortar fire than to remain lying still. They knew that tanks most often crush those who run away from them, and that a German submachine gunner, shooting from two hundred meters, always expects to frighten rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but salutary soldierly truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they were not so easy to kill.

He had a third of the battalion of such soldiers. The rest were to see the war for the first time. At one of the wagons, guarding the property not yet loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted the attention of Saburov with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like peaks, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he famously took "on guard" and with a direct, unblinking look continued to look into the face of the captain. In the way he stood, how he was belted, how he held his rifle, one could feel that soldier's experience, which is given only 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? Saburov asked.

“Konyukov,” the Red Army man rapped out and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.

- Did you participate in battles?

- Yes sir.

- Near Przemysl.

- Here's how. So, they retreated from Przemysl itself?

- Not at all. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.

- That's it.

Saburov looked attentively at Konyukov. The soldier's face was serious, almost solemn.

- And in this war for a long time in the army? Saburov asked.

No, the first month.

Saburov took another look at Konyukov's strong figure with pleasure 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-held square watch, he said:

- Allow me, comrade captain, to check with yours?

Saburov silently took out his watch from 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 cracked glass.

Saburov smiled:

- Nothing, change it. Firstly, the clock is still fatherly, Bure, and secondly, get used to the fact that in war the authorities always have the right time.

Maslennikov once again looked at those and other watches, carefully brought his own and, having saluted, asked permission to be free.

The trip in the echelon, where he was appointed commandant, and this unloading were the first front-line task for Maslennikov. Here, in Elton, it seemed to him that he already smelled of the proximity of the front. He was excited, anticipating a war in which, as it seemed to him, he shamefully long did not take part. And Saburov fulfilled everything entrusted to him today with special accuracy and thoroughness.

“Yes, yes, go,” Saburov said after a moment of silence.

Looking at this ruddy, lively boyish face, Saburov imagined what it would be like in a week, when the dirty, tedious, merciless trench life would first fall upon Maslennikov with all its weight.

A small steam locomotive, puffing, dragged the long-awaited second echelon onto the siding.

Hurrying as always, the regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Babchenko, jumped off the footboard of the cool carriage while still on the move. Twisting his leg as he jumped, he cursed and hobbled towards Saburov, who was hurrying towards him.

How about unloading? he asked frowningly, without looking into Saburov's face.

- Finished.

Babchenko looked around. The unloading was indeed completed. But the gloomy look and strict tone, which Babchenko considered it his duty to maintain in all conversations with his subordinates, demanded from him even now that he make some kind of remark in order to maintain his prestige.

- What you are doing? he asked curtly.

- I'm waiting for your orders.

- It would be better if people were fed for now than to wait.

“In the event that we start now, I decided to feed people at the first halt, 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, which he especially does not loved Babchenko, who was always in a hurry.

The lieutenant colonel said nothing.

- Would you like to feed now? Saburov asked.

- No, feed at a halt. Go without waiting for the others. Order to build.

Saburov called Maslennikov and ordered him to line up the men.

Babchenko was gloomily silent. He was used to always doing everything himself, he was always in a hurry and often did not keep up.

Strictly speaking, the battalion commander is not obliged to build a marching column himself. But the fact that Saburov entrusted this to another, while he himself was now calmly, doing nothing, was standing next to him, the regiment commander, annoyed Babchenko. He liked 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 regimental commander did not like him, but he was already used to this and did not pay attention.

They both stood silent 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, heavily stepping over the sleepers, the Stalingrad refugees walked in a file, ragged, exhausted, bandaged with dust-gray bandages.

They both looked in the direction in which the regiment was to go. There lay the same as here, the bald steppe, and only the dust in front, curled on the mounds, looked like distant puffs of gunpowder smoke.

- Place of collection in Rybachy. Go on an accelerated march and send messengers to me, ”Babchenko said with the same gloomy expression on his face and, turning, went to his car.

Saburov took to the road. The companies have already lined up. In anticipation of the start of the march, the command was given: "At ease." The ranks were talking quietly. Walking towards the head of the column past the second company, Saburov again saw the red-moustached Konyukov: he was talking animatedly, waving his arms.

- Battalion, listen to my command!

The column moved. Saburov walked ahead. The distant dust that swirled over the steppe again seemed to him like smoke. However, perhaps, in fact, the steppe was burning ahead.

II

Twenty days ago, on a sweltering August day, the bombers of Richthofen's air squadron hovered over the city in the morning. It is difficult to say how many there were in reality and how many times they bombed, flew away and returned again, but in just one day, observers counted two thousand aircraft over the city.

The city was on fire. It burned through the night, all the next day, and all the next night. And although on the first day of the fire the fighting went on for another sixty kilometers from the city, at the Don crossings, but it was from this fire that the great battle of Stalingrad began, because both the Germans and we - one in front of us, the other behind us - from that moment saw the glow Stalingrad, and all the thoughts of both fighting sides were from now on, like a magnet, attracted to the burning city.

On the third day, when the fire began to die down, that special, painful smell of ashes was established in Stalingrad, which then did not leave it all the months of the siege. The smells of burnt iron, charred wood, and scorched bricks mingled into one thing, stupefying, heavy, and acrid. Soot and ashes quickly settled to the ground, but as soon as the lightest wind from the Volga blew, this black dust began to swirl along the burned streets, and then it seemed that the city was smoky again.

The Germans continued bombing, and here and there new fires flared up in Stalingrad, which no longer affected anyone. They ended relatively quickly, because, having burned down several new houses, the fire soon reached the previously burnt streets and, finding no food for itself, went out. But the city was so huge that there was always something on fire somewhere, and everyone was already used to this constant glow as a necessary part of the night landscape.

On the tenth day after the start of the fire, the Germans came so close that their shells and mines began to burst more and more often in the center of the city.

On the twenty-first day, the moment came when it might seem to a person who believed only in military theory that it was useless and even impossible to defend the city any longer. To the north of the city, the Germans reached the Volga, to the south they approached it. The city, which stretched for sixty-five kilometers in length, was nowhere more than five in width, and along almost its entire length the Germans had already occupied the western outskirts.

The cannonade, which began at seven in the morning, did not stop until sunset. To the uninitiated, who got to the headquarters of the army, it would seem that everything is going well and that, in any case, the defenders still have a lot of strength. Looking at the headquarters map of the city, where the location of the troops was plotted, he would have seen that this relatively small area was densely covered with the numbers of divisions and brigades standing on the defensive. He could have heard the orders given by telephone to the commanders of these divisions and brigades, and it might have seemed to him that all he had to do was follow all these orders exactly, and success would undoubtedly be guaranteed. In order to really understand what was happening, this uninitiated observer would have to get to the divisions themselves, which were marked on the map in the form of such neat red semicircles.

Most of the divisions retreating from behind the Don, exhausted in two months of battles, were now incomplete battalions in terms of the number of bayonets. There were still quite a few people in the headquarters and in the artillery regiments, but in the rifle companies every fighter was on the account. In recent days, in the rear units they took everyone who was not absolutely necessary there. Telephonists, cooks, chemists were put at the disposal of regimental commanders and, of necessity, became infantry. But although the chief of staff of the army, looking at the map, knew perfectly well that his divisions were no longer divisions, but the size of the areas they occupied still required that they should fall on their shoulders exactly the task that should fall on the shoulders of the division. And, knowing that this burden was unbearable, all the chiefs, from the largest to the smallest, nevertheless placed this unbearable burden on the shoulders of their subordinates, for there was no other way out, and it was still necessary to fight.

Before the war, the commander of the army would probably have laughed if he had been told that the day would come when the entire mobile reserve that he would have at his disposal would amount to several hundred people. And yet today it was just like that ... Several hundred submachine gunners, planted on trucks - that was all that he could quickly transfer from one end of the city to the other at the critical moment of the breakthrough.

On a large and flat hill of Mamaev Kurgan, some kilometer from the front line, in dugouts and trenches, the command post of the army was located. The Germans stopped the attacks, either postponing them until dark, or deciding to rest until the morning. The situation in general, and this silence in particular, forced us to assume that in the morning there would be an indispensable and decisive assault.

"We'd have lunch," said the adjutant, squeezing his way into the little dugout where the chief of staff and a member of the Military Council were sitting over a map. They both looked at each other, then at the map, then back at each other. If the adjutant had not reminded them that they needed to have lunch, they might have sat over it for a long time. They alone knew how dangerous the situation really was, and although everything that could be done had already been foreseen and the commander himself went to the division to check the fulfillment of his orders, it was still difficult to break away from the map - I wanted to miraculously find out on this sheet of paper some new, unprecedented possibilities.

“Dine like that, dine,” said Matveev, a member of the Military Council, a cheerful person who loved to eat in those cases when, amid the hustle and bustle of the headquarters, there was time for this.

They took to the air. It began to get dark. Below, to the right of the mound, against the background of a leaden sky, like a herd of fiery animals, Katyusha shells flashed by. The Germans were preparing for the night, launching the first white rockets into the air, marking their front line.

The so-called green ring passed through Mamayev Kurgan. It was started in the thirtieth year by the Stalingrad Komsomol members and for ten years surrounded their dusty and stuffy city with a belt of young parks and boulevards. The top of Mamayev Kurgan was also lined with thin ten-year-old linden trees.

Matthew looked around. This warm autumn evening was so good, it suddenly became so quiet all around, so smelled of the last summer freshness from the lime trees beginning to turn yellow, that it seemed absurd to him to sit in a dilapidated hut where the dining room was located.

“Tell them to bring the table here,” he turned to the adjutant, “we will dine under the lime trees.”

A rickety table was taken out of the kitchen, covered with a tablecloth, and two benches were placed.

“Well, General, sit down,” Matveev said to the chief of staff. “It’s been a long time since you and I dined under the lime trees, and it’s unlikely that we will have to soon.

And he looked back at the burnt city.

The adjutant brought vodka in glasses.

“Do you remember, General,” Matveev continued, “once in Sokolniki, near the labyrinth, there were such cells with a living fence made of trimmed lilacs, and in each there was a table and benches. And the samovar was served ... More and more families came there.

- Well, there were mosquitoes there, - the chief of staff, who was not inclined to lyrics, interjected, - not like here.

“But there is no samovar here,” said Matveyev.

- But there are no mosquitoes. And the labyrinth there really was such that it was difficult to get out.

Matveev looked over his shoulder at the city spread out below and grinned:

- Labyrinth...

Below, the streets converged, diverged and tangled up, on which, among the decisions of many human destinies, one big fate had to be decided - the fate of the army.

In the semi-darkness the adjutant grew up.

- They arrived from the left bank from Bobrov. It was evident from his voice that he ran here and was out of breath.

- Where are they? Rising, Matveev asked curtly.

- With me! Comrade Major! called the adjutant.

A tall figure, barely visible in the darkness, appeared next to him.

- Have you met? Matthew asked.

- We met. Colonel Bobrov ordered to report that they would now begin the crossing.

“Good,” said Matveyev, and sighed deeply and with relief.

The fact that the last hours worried him, and the chief of staff, and everyone around him, was decided.

Has the Commander returned yet? he asked the adjutant.

- Look for the divisions where he is, and report that Bobrov met.

III

Colonel Bobrov was sent early in the morning to meet and hurry up the very division in which Saburov commanded the battalion. Bobrov met her at noon, not reaching Srednyaya Akhtuba, thirty kilometers from the Volga. And the first person he spoke to was Saburov, who was walking at the head of the battalion. Asking Saburov for the number of the division and learning from him that its commander was following behind, the colonel quickly got into the car, ready to move.

“Comrade Captain,” he said to Saburov and looked him in the face with tired eyes, “I don’t need to explain to you why your battalion should be at the crossing by eighteen o’clock.

And without saying a word, he slammed the door.

At six o'clock in the evening, returning, Bobrov found Saburov already on the shore. After a tiring march, the battalion came to the Volga out of order, stretching out, but already half an hour after the first fighters saw the Volga, Saburov managed, in anticipation of further orders, to place everyone along the ravines and slopes of the hilly coast.

When Saburov, waiting for the crossing, sat down to rest on the logs lying near the water, Colonel Bobrov sat down next to him and offered to smoke.

They smoked.

- Well, how is it? Saburov asked and nodded towards the right bank.

“Difficult,” said the Colonel. “It's difficult…” And for the third time he repeated in a whisper: “It's difficult,” as if there was nothing to add to this exhaustive word.

And if the first “difficult” meant simply difficult, and the second “difficult” meant very difficult, then the third “difficult”, said in a whisper, meant terribly difficult, painfully.

Saburov silently looked at the right bank of the Volga. Here it is - high, steep, like all the western banks of Russian rivers. The eternal misfortune that Saburov experienced during this war: all the western banks of the Russian and Ukrainian rivers were steep, all the eastern ones were sloping. And all the cities stood precisely on the western banks of the rivers - Kyiv, Smolensk, Dnepropetrovsk, Rostov ... And it was difficult to defend them all, because they were pressed against the river, and it would be difficult to take them all back, because then they would be across the river.

It began to get dark, but it was clearly visible how German bombers were circling, entering and exiting over the city, and anti-aircraft explosions were covering the sky with a thick layer, similar to small cirrus clouds.

In the southern part of the city a large elevator was burning, even from here it was clear how the flames rose above it. In its high stone chimney, apparently, there was a huge draft.

And across the waterless steppe, beyond the Volga, thousands of hungry refugees, thirsting for at least a crust of bread, went to Elton.

But all this now gave rise to Saburov not an age-old general conclusion about the futility and monstrosity of the war, but a simple clear feeling of hatred for the Germans.

The evening was cool, but after the scorching steppe sun, after the dusty crossing, Saburov still could not come to his senses, he was constantly thirsty. He took a helmet from one of the fighters, went down the slope to the Volga itself, sinking into the soft coastal sand, and reached the water. Having scooped up the first time, he thoughtlessly and greedily drank this cold clear water. But when, having already half cooled down, he scooped it up a second time and raised the helmet to his lips, suddenly, it seemed, the simplest and at the same time sharp thought struck him: Volga water! He drank water from the Volga, and at the same time he was at war. These two concepts - war and the Volga - for all their obviousness did not fit with each other. From childhood, from school, all his life, the Volga was for him something so deep, so infinitely Russian, that now the fact that he was standing on the banks of the Volga and drinking water from it, and there were Germans on the other side, seemed to him incredible and wild .

With this feeling, he climbed up the sandy slope to where Colonel Bobrov was still sitting. Bobrov looked at him and, as if answering his hidden thoughts, said thoughtfully:

The steamboat, dragging the barge behind it, landed on the shore in fifteen minutes. Saburov and Bobrov approached a hastily put together wooden wharf where loading was to take place.

The wounded were carried from the barge past the fighters crowded by the bridges. Some groaned, but most remained silent. A young sister went from stretcher to stretcher. Following the seriously wounded, a dozen and a half of those who could still walk got off the barge.

“There are few lightly wounded,” Saburov said to Bobrov.

- Few? - Bobrov asked again and grinned: - The same number as everywhere else, only not everyone crosses.

- Why? Saburov asked.

- How can I tell you ... they stay, because it is difficult and because of the excitement. And bitterness. No, I'm not telling you that. If you cross over, on the third day you will understand why.

The soldiers of the first company began to cross the bridges to the barge. Meanwhile, an unforeseen complication arose, it turned out that a lot of people had accumulated on the shore, who wanted to be loaded right now and on this very barge heading for Stalingrad. One was returning from the hospital; another was carrying a barrel of vodka from the food warehouse and demanded that it be loaded with him; the third, a huge big man, clutching a heavy box to his chest, pressing on Saburov, said that these were primers for mines and that if he didn’t deliver them today, then they would take off his head; Finally, there were people who simply for various reasons crossed over to the left bank in the morning and now wanted to be back in Stalingrad as soon as possible. No persuasion worked. From their tone and facial expressions, it was by no means possible to assume that there, on the right bank, where they were in such a hurry, was a besieged city, on the streets of which shells were exploding every minute!

Saburov allowed the man with the capsules and the quartermaster to dive in with vodka, and pushed off the rest, saying that they would go on the next barge. The last to approach him was a nurse who had just arrived from Stalingrad and was seeing off the wounded as they were unloaded from the barge. She said that there were still wounded on the other side, and that with this barge she would have to bring them here. Saburov could not refuse her, and when the company sank, she followed the others along a narrow ladder, first to a barge, and then to a steamboat.

The captain, a middle-aged man in a blue jacket and in an old Soviet trade fleet cap with a broken visor, muttered some order into a mouthpiece, and the steamboat set sail from the left bank.

Saburov was sitting in the stern, his legs hanging overboard and his arms around the rails. He took off his overcoat and placed it next to him. It was nice to feel the wind from the river climbing under the tunic. He unbuttoned his tunic and pulled it over his chest so that it puffed out like a sail.

“Get a cold, comrade captain,” said the girl standing next to him, who was riding for the wounded.

Saburov smiled. It seemed ridiculous to him that in the fifteenth month of the war, while crossing to Stalingrad, he would suddenly catch a cold. He didn't answer.

“And you won’t notice how you’ll catch a cold,” the girl insistently repeated. - It's cold on the river in the evenings. I swim across every day and have already caught a cold so much that I don’t even have a voice.

- Do you swim every day? Saburov asked, raising his eyes to her. - How many times?

- How many wounded, so many I swim across. After all, now it’s not like it used to be - first to the regiment, then to the medical battalion, then to the hospital. We immediately take the wounded from the front line and carry them over the Volga ourselves.

She said this in such a calm tone that Saburov, unexpectedly for himself, asked that idle question that he usually did not like to ask:

“Aren’t you scared so many times back and forth?”

“Terrible,” the girl admitted. - When I take the wounded from there, it’s not scary, but when I return there alone, it’s scary. When you're alone, it's scarier, right?

“That's right,” Saburov said, and thought to himself that he himself, being in his battalion, thinking about him, was always less afraid than in those rare moments when he was left alone.

The girl sat down beside her, also hung her legs over the water, and, touching him trustingly on the shoulder, said in a whisper:

- You know what's scary? No, you don't know... You're already many years old, you don't know... It's scary that they'll suddenly kill you and nothing will happen. Nothing will be what I always dreamed of.

- What will not happen?

“But nothing will happen… Do you know how old I am?” I'm eighteen. I haven't seen anything yet, nothing. I dreamed about how I would study, and did not study ... I dreamed about how I would go to Moscow and everywhere, everywhere - and I had not been anywhere. I dreamed ... - she laughed, but then continued: - I dreamed of how I would get married, - and none of this happened either ... And now I am sometimes afraid, very afraid that all of a sudden all this will not happen. I will die, and nothing, nothing will happen.

- And if you were already studying and traveling where you wanted, and were married, do you think you would not be so scared? Saburov asked.

“No,” she said with conviction. - Here you are, I know, not as scary as me. You are many years old.

- How?

- Well, thirty-five - forty, right?

“Yes,” Saburov smiled and thought bitterly that it was completely useless to prove to her that he was not forty or even thirty-five and that he, too, had not yet learned everything he wanted to learn, and had not been where he wanted to be, and loved the way he wanted to love.

“You see,” she said, “that’s why you shouldn’t be afraid. And I'm scared.

This was said with such sadness and at the same time selflessness that Saburov wanted right now, immediately, like a child, to stroke her head and say some empty and kind words that everything would still be fine and that with her nothing will happen. But the sight of the burning city kept him from these idle words, and instead he did only one thing: he really gently stroked her head and quickly removed his hand, not wanting her to think that he understood her frankness differently than he needed to.

“We had a surgeon killed today,” the girl said. - I transported him when he died ... He was always angry, cursed at everyone. And when he operated, he swore and shouted at us. And you know, the more the wounded moaned and the more it hurt them, the more he cursed. And when he began to die himself, I transported him - he was wounded in the stomach - he was very hurt, and he lay quietly, and did not swear, and did not say anything at all. And I realized that he must have actually been a very kind person. He swore because he could not see how people were hurting, and when he himself was hurt, he was silent and said nothing, so until his death ... nothing ... Only when I cried over him, he suddenly smiled. Why do you think?

1942 New units are pouring into the army of the defenders of Stalingrad, transferred to the right bank of the Volga. Among them is the battalion of Captain Saburov. With a furious attack, the Saburovites are knocking out the Nazis from three buildings that have wedged into our defenses. Days and nights of heroic defense of houses that have become impregnable for the enemy begin.

“... On the night of the fourth day, having received an order for Konyukov and several medals for his garrison at the regimental headquarters, Saburov once again made his way to Konyukov’s house and presented awards. Everyone to whom they were intended were alive, although this rarely happened in Stalingrad. Konyukov asked Saburov to screw on the order - his left hand was cut by a fragment of a grenade. When Saburov, like a soldier, with a folding knife, cut a hole in Konyukov's tunic and began to screw the order, Konyukov, standing at attention, said:

- I think, comrade captain, that if you make an attack on them, then it is most capable of going right through my house. They keep me under siege here, and we are right from here - and on them. How do you like my plan, Comrade Captain?

- Wait. There will be time - we will do it, - Saburov said.

Is the plan correct, Comrade Captain? Konyukov insisted. – What do you think?

- Correct, correct ... - Saburov thought to himself that in the event of an attack, Konyukov's simple plan was really the most correct.

“Right through my house—and on them,” repeated Konyukov. - With a complete surprise.

He repeated the words "my house" often and with pleasure; a rumor had already reached him, by soldier's mail, that this house was called “Konyukov's house” in the reports, and he was proud of it. ... "

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov

Days and nights

In memory of those who died for Stalingrad

... so heavy mlat,

crushing glass, forging damask steel.

A. Pushkin

The exhausted woman sat leaning against the clay wall of the barn, and in a voice calm from fatigue told about how Stalingrad burned down.

It was dry and dusty. A weak breeze rolled yellow clouds of dust under their feet. The woman's feet were burned and barefoot, and when she spoke, she used her hand to scoop up warm dust to the inflamed feet, as if trying to soothe the pain.

Captain Saburov glanced at his heavy boots and involuntarily took half a step back.

He silently stood and listened to the woman, looking over her head to where, at the outermost houses, right in the steppe, the train was unloading.

Behind the steppe, a white stripe of a salt lake shone in the sun, and all this, taken together, seemed to be the end of the world. Now, in September, there was the last and nearest railway station to Stalingrad. Further from the bank of the Volga had to go on foot. The town was called Elton, after the name of the salt lake. Saburov involuntarily remembered the words "Elton" and "Baskunchak" memorized from school. Once it 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 ached. Before they went from city to city, from Kharkov to Valuyki, from Valuyki to Rossosh, from Rossosh to Boguchar, and women wept in the same way, and he listened to them in the same way with a mixed feeling of shame and weariness. But here was the Volga naked steppe, the end of the world, and in the words of the woman there was no longer a 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 drive it, huh? - he whispered, and all the unaccountable longing of the last day, when he looked at the steppe from the car, was embarrassed by 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 about how he would have to go back. And there was in his gloomy thoughts that special stubbornness, characteristic of a Russian person, which did not allow either him or his comrades, even once during the whole war, to admit the possibility that there would be no “return”.

He looked at the soldiers hastily unloading from the wagons, and he wanted to get through this dust to the Volga as soon as possible and, having crossed it, to 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, one by one naming the broken and burned streets. Unfamiliar to Saburov, their names were filled with special meaning for her. She knew where and when the now burnt houses were built, where and when the trees cut down on the barricades were planted, she regretted all this, as if it were not a big city, but her house, where friends who belonged to her personal things.

But she just didn’t say anything about her house, and Saburov, listening to her, thought how, in fact, rarely during the entire war he came across people who regretted their missing property. And the longer the war went on, the less often people remembered their abandoned houses and the more often and stubbornly they remembered only abandoned cities.

Wiping her tears with the end of her handkerchief, the woman cast a long, questioning glance over all who were listening to her and said thoughtfully and with conviction:

How much money, how much work!

– What works? 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, while her husband and daughter had probably remained in Stalingrad. When the bombing and fire began, she was alone and has not known anything about them since.

- Are you in Stalingrad? she asked.

“Yes,” Saburov replied, not seeing a military secret in this, for what else, if not to go to Stalingrad, could a military echelon be unloading now in this God-forgotten Elton.

- Our surname is Klimenko. Husband - Ivan Vasilyevich, and daughter - Anya. Maybe you will meet somewhere alive, - the woman said with a faint hope.

“Maybe I’ll meet,” Saburov answered as usual.

The battalion had finished unloading. Saburov said goodbye to the woman and, having drunk a ladle of water from a bucket put out on the street, went to the railway track.

The fighters, sitting on the sleepers, took off their boots, tucked footcloths. Some of them, having saved the rations given out in the morning, chewed bread and dry sausage. A true, as usual, soldier's rumor spread through the battalion that after unloading, a march was immediately ahead, and everyone was in a hurry to finish their unfinished business. Some ate, others repaired torn tunics, others smoked.

Saburov walked along the station tracks. The echelon in which the commander of the regiment Babchenko was traveling was supposed to come up 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 regiment.

Saburov walked along the tracks and looked at the people with whom he was to fight the day after tomorrow.

He knew many by face and by name. They were "Voronezh" - this is how he called those who fought with him near Voronezh. Each of them was a treasure, because they could be ordered without explaining unnecessary details.

They knew when the black drops of bombs falling from the plane flew right at them and they had to lie down, and they knew when the bombs would fall further and they could safely watch their flight. They knew that it was no more dangerous to crawl forward under mortar fire than to remain lying still. They knew that tanks most often crush those who run away from them, and that a German submachine gunner, shooting from two hundred meters, always expects to frighten rather than kill. In a word, they knew all those simple but salutary soldierly truths, the knowledge of which gave them confidence that they were not so easy to kill.

He had a third of the battalion of such soldiers. The rest were to see the war for the first time. At one of the wagons, guarding the property not yet loaded onto the carts, stood a middle-aged Red Army soldier, who from a distance attracted the attention of Saburov with his guard bearing and thick red mustache, like peaks, sticking out to the sides. When Saburov approached him, he famously took "on guard" and with a direct, unblinking look continued to look into the face of the captain. In the way he stood, how he was belted, how he held his rifle, one could feel that soldier's experience, which is given only 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? Saburov asked.

“Konyukov,” the Red Army man rapped out and again stared fixedly at the captain’s face.

- Did you participate in battles?

- Yes sir.

- Near Przemysl.

- Here's how. So, they retreated from Przemysl itself?

- Not at all. They were advancing. In the sixteenth year.