Astafiev V.P. cheerful soldier
To the bright and bitter memory of my daughters Lydia and Irina.
God! it becomes empty and scary in Your world!
N. V. Gogol
Part one
Soldier being treated
On September 14, 1944, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.
It happened on the eastern slope of the Dukla Pass, in Poland. The observation post of the artillery battalion, in the control platoon of which I, having changed several military professions due to injuries, fought as a signalman of the front line, was located on the edge of a rather dense and wild pine forest for Europe, which flowed down from a large mountain to the bald patches of ugly fields, on which it remained unharvested only potatoes, beetroot, and, broken by the wind, rag dangled with withered tatters of corn with already broken cobs, in places black and bald burnt out from incendiary bombs and shells.
The mountain, near which we stood, was so high and steep that the forest thinned to its top, under the very sky the peak was completely bare, the rocks reminded us, since we got into ancient country, the ruins of an old castle, to the hollows and crevices of which the roots of trees clung here and there and fearfully, secretly grew in the shade and wind, starved, crooked, like everything - wind, storms and even themselves - afraid.
The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down from below with huge mossy stones, as if squeezed the rim of the mountain, and along this rim, clinging to stones and roots, entangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all kinds of woody and herbal dope, hatching out of the stones with a key, ran into the ravine is a river, and the farther it ran, the faster, more full-flowing and more talkative it became.
Across the river, in the near field, half of which had already been emptied and was glowing green with aftermath, sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a haystack that had settled and was touched by black on a deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered with almost drooping potato tops, where sunflowers, where hawkweed, sow thistle, densely littered with tufts.
Having made a sharp turn to the ravine, which was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of dope, which had grown and impassably woven in it. As if mad, the river flew noisily out of the darkness to the fields, obsequiously wagged between the hills and rushed to the village, which was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds blown by it.
We could hardly see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a pointed spire of the church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made one more knee and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a dark Siberian farmstead, covered with planks, chopped from thick logs, sprinkled with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses on the backs and vegetable gardens. A lot of things had already burned down there, and something else was languidly and sleepily smoking, causing ashes and tar smoke from there.
Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village ahead of us still had to be beaten off, how many enemies there were, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat in a good way - no one knew yet.
Our units dug in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, across the river, two hundred meters away from us, infantry moved in the field and pretended to dig in, in fact, the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate from the belly potatoes. In a wooden farm in the morning, in two voices, announcing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and with a painful groan fell silent. The infantrymen sent patrols there and profited from fresh meat. Ours also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhytomyr region and said that no one in the world could grind a pig with straw better than him, only sports. But it didn't burn out.
The situation was unclear. After our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, quite thickly and accurately fired two mortars at once and then began to pour from machine guns, and when bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest, hit the trunks, then this already surrenders to continuous fire and a nightmare, the situation has become not only difficult, but also disturbing.
We all immediately earned more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer with a pistol in his hand ran down the slope of the field to the infantry and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung with his boot to one of his subordinates, forcing them to fill the fires. We heard: “Gouging! Razmundyay! Once ... ”, well, and the like, familiar to our brother, if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.
We dug in, put an end to communication with the infantry, sent a signalman with the apparatus there. He said that all the uncles here, therefore, swept warriors in the Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having drunk potatoes, sleep in all directions and the company commander was all crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we should be on the alert and in combat readiness.
The cross on the church twinkled like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village was marked by the tops more clearly, cock cries came from it, a motley herd of cows and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects scattered over the hills came out into the field. Behind the village, hills turning into hills, then into mountains, further - heavily lying on the ground and resting with a blue hump against the skies blurred by the autumn slush, the same pass that the Russian troops tried to cross back in the last, in the imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, go to the side and rear of the enemy and, with the help of a clever maneuver, get a bloodless victory as soon as possible. But having laid on these slopes where we sat now, about a hundred thousand lives, Russian troops Let's go look elsewhere.
Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy that even in this, in "our" already war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the "old" generals, again crowded around Dukla Pass, trying to cross it, get into Slovakia and with such a clever, bloodless maneuver cut off the Nazi troops from the Balkans, withdraw Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries from the war, and end the exhausted war as soon as possible.
Astafiev V.P. cheerful soldier
To the bright and bitter memory of my daughters Lydia and Irina.
God! it becomes empty and scary in Your world! N. V. Gogol
Part one
Soldier being treated
On September 14, 1944, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.
It happened on the eastern slope of the Dukla Pass, in Poland. The observation post of the artillery battalion, in the control platoon of which I, having changed several military professions due to injuries, fought as a signalman of the front line, was located on the edge of a rather dense and wild pine forest for Europe, which flowed down from a large mountain to the bald patches of ugly fields, on which it remained unharvested only potatoes, beetroot, and, broken by the wind, rag dangled with withered tatters of corn with already broken cobs, in places black and bald burnt out from incendiary bombs and shells.
The mountain near which we stood was so high and steep that the forest thinned to its top, under the very sky the peak was completely bare, the rocks reminded us, since we got into an ancient country, the ruins of an ancient castle, to the hollows and crevices of which there and here the roots clung to the trees and fearfully, secretly grew in the shade and the wind, starved, crooked, like everything - the wind, storms, and even themselves - afraid.
The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down from below with huge mossy stones, as if squeezed the rim of the mountain, and along this rim, clinging to stones and roots, entangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all kinds of woody and herbal dope, hatching out of the stones with a key, ran into the ravine is a river, and the farther it ran, the faster, more full-flowing and more talkative it became.
Across the river, in the near field, half of which had already been emptied and was glowing green with aftermath, sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a haystack that had settled and was touched by black on a deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered with almost drooping potato tops, where sunflowers, where hawkweed, sow thistle, densely littered with tufts.
Having made a sharp turn to the ravine, which was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of dope, which had grown and impassably woven in it. As if mad, the river flew noisily out of the darkness to the fields, obsequiously wagged between the hills and rushed to the village, which was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds blown by it.
We could hardly see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a pointed spire of the church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made one more knee and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a dark Siberian farmstead, covered with planks, chopped from thick logs, sprinkled with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses on the backs and vegetable gardens. A lot of things had already burned down there, and something else was languidly and sleepily smoking, causing ashes and tar smoke from there.
Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village ahead of us still had to be beaten off, how many enemies there were, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat in a good way - no one knew yet.
Our units dug in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, across the river, two hundred meters away from us, infantry moved in the field and pretended to dig in, in fact, the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate from the belly potatoes. In a wooden farm in the morning, in two voices, announcing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and with a painful groan fell silent. The infantrymen sent patrols there and profited from fresh meat. Ours also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhytomyr region and said that no one in the world could grind a pig with straw better than him, only sports. But it didn't burn out.
The situation was unclear. After our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, quite thickly and accurately fired two mortars at once and then began to pour from machine guns, and when bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest, hit the trunks, then this already surrenders to continuous fire and a nightmare, the situation has become not only difficult, but also disturbing.
We all immediately earned more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer with a pistol in his hand ran down the slope of the field to the infantry and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung with his boot to one of his subordinates, forcing them to fill the fires. We heard: “Gouging! Razmundyay! Once ... ”, well, and the like, familiar to our brother, if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.
We dug in, put an end to communication with the infantry, sent a signalman with the apparatus there. He said that all the uncles here, therefore, swept warriors in the Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having drunk potatoes, sleep in all directions and the company commander was all crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we should be on the alert and in combat readiness.
The cross on the church twinkled like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village was marked by the tops more clearly, cock cries were heard from it, a motley herd of cows and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects over the hills came out into the field. Behind the village, hills turning into hills, then into mountains, further - heavily lying on the ground and a blue hump resting against the skies blurred by the autumn slurry skies, the same pass that Russian troops sought to cross back in the last, imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, go to the side and rear of the enemy and, with the help of a clever maneuver, get a bloodless victory as soon as possible. But, having laid down about a hundred thousand lives on these slopes, where we were sitting now, the Russian troops went to seek their luck elsewhere.
Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy that even in this, in "our" already war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the "old" generals, again crowded around Dukla Pass, trying to cross it, get into Slovakia and with such a clever, bloodless maneuver cut off the Nazi troops from the Balkans, withdraw Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries from the war, and end the exhausted war as soon as possible.
But the Germans also had their own task, and it did not converge with ours, it was of the opposite order: they did not let us go to the pass, they resisted skillfully and staunchly. In the evening, from a village lying behind a hill, they frightened us with mortars. Mines exploded in the trees, since the ditches, cracks and communication passages were not blocked, showered us with fragments from above - at our and other observation posts, the artillerymen suffered losses, and considerable ones, due to such a thin, but, as it turned out, destructive fire. At night, the cracks and ditches were dug into the mowing, in which case you will roll down the mowing from the fragments - and the devil is not your brother, the dugouts are covered with logs and earth, the observation cells are disguised. It's hot!
During the night, several fires lit up ahead of us, a relief company of infantry came and took up
Cheerful soldier Victor Astafiev
(No ratings yet)
Title: Merry Soldier
About the book "Merry Soldier" Viktor Astafiev
The whole truth about the war. Without pathos about heroism and exploits. Truth as it is. Cruel, destructive, dirty and hungry. Confession of an eyewitness who went through all the circles of hell of the Great Patriotic War.
The book "Merry Soldier" - Russian writer, veteran Victor Astafiev can be considered autobiographical. Through the whole Great Patriotic War, the author only at the end of his years decided to put his truth on paper. He had always resented how veiled in Soviet time the war was described, it seemed heroic, sacred, victorious. No one wanted to present military events objectively. Or censorship did not allow.
Already in the late 90s, based on the work, it was filmed documentary"Merry Soldier", in which Viktor Astafiev himself played a leading role. The elderly writer shared his memories and stories of his comrades-in-arms on camera. The film directed by Nikita Mikhalkov was hard received by the viewers amazed by the truth, deservedly collecting numerous awards.
From the first pages, the book tells about how a soldier fights and gets injured. Dirt and unsanitary conditions of the hospital, where the wounded are dying in batches. Lack of essential medicines. To all this the protagonist tragically experiences the murder of the enemy committed by him. What is it like to look into the eyes of the person you killed?
With all the details, it tells about the crossing of the Dnieper during the offensive of the Red Army. The operation was absolutely not prepared, as a result, only on the site of the protagonist of 25 thousand soldiers only a little more than three thousand reached the shore. After all, the price of human life was negligible. Human losses were not of interest to the state. The main thing is the result, victory at any cost.
It is also hard to read about the extremely difficult living conditions described by the author during and after the war for his family, loved ones and most people.
Lots and lots of funny soldier's humor and way of life, songs and dances. Maybe that's why Viktor Astafiev called his book "Merry Soldier"? There are obscene words. And how without them in the war?
The confession called "Jolly Soldier" touches the soul and teaches to enjoy every day. After all, the heroes of the book had nothing but pain, fear, tears. But there was an irresistible will to live, which helped them survive and win.
On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online book"Merry Soldier" Viktor Astafiev in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. Buy full version you can have our partner. Also, here you will find latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For beginner writers there is a separate section with useful tips and recommendations interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary skills.
Quotes from the book "Merry Soldier" Viktor Astafiev
God Merciful! Why did You give such a terrible power into the hands of an unreasoning being? Why did You put fire into his hands before his mind matured and strengthened? Why did You endow him with such a will that is beyond his humility? Why did You teach him to kill, but did not give him the opportunity to resurrect, so that he could marvel at the fruits of his folly? Here he is, the bastard, in one person here both the king and the serf - let him listen to music worthy of his genius. Drive to this hell ahead of those who, abusing the mind given to him, invented all this, invented it, created it. No, not in one person, but in a herd, a herd: both kings, and kings, and leaders - for ten days, from palaces, temples, villas, dungeons, party offices - to the Velikokrinitsky bridgehead! So that no salt, no bread, so that rats eat off their noses and ears, so that they take on their own skin what is called war. So that they too, jumping out to the edge of the steep bank, on this lifeless ice, as if rising above the ground, tore their shirt gray from mud and lice and yelled like a gray soldier who had just run out of cover and called out: “Yes, kill quickly !..”
Stretches and stretches through history, and not only Russian, this eternal theme: why do mortal people like this talker-soldier send and send their own kind to be slaughtered? After all, it turns out that brother betrays brother in Christ, brother kills brother. From the Kremlin itself, from the Hitlerite military office, to the dirty trench, to the lowest rank, to the executor of the tsar's or marshal's will, a thread stretches, along which follows the order to go to death. And the soldier, even if he is the last creature, also wants to live, he is alone, in the whole world and the wind, and why is it that he, the unfortunate man who has never seen a tsar, a leader, or a marshal, should lose his only value - life? And a small particle of this world, called a soldier, must resist two terrible forces, the one in front and the one behind, the soldier must contrive, resist, survive, in the fire-frying pan, and even save his strength in order to as the peasant to eliminate the consequences of the destruction that they themselves have created, to manage to prolong the human race, because it is not the leaders, not the kings who prolong it, the peasants back.
On September 14, 1944, I killed a man. German. Fascist. At war.
It happened on the eastern slope of the Dukla Pass, in Poland. The observation post of the artillery battalion, in the control platoon of which I, having changed several military professions due to injuries, fought as a signalman of the front line, was located on the edge of a rather dense and wild pine forest for Europe, which flowed down from a large mountain to the bald patches of ugly fields, on which it remained unharvested only potatoes, beetroot, and, broken by the wind, rag dangled with withered tatters of corn with already broken cobs, in places black and bald burnt out from incendiary bombs and shells.
The mountain near which we stood was so high and steep that the forest thinned to its top, under the very sky the peak was completely bare, the rocks reminded us, since we got into an ancient country, the ruins of an ancient castle, to the hollows and crevices of which there and here the roots clung to the trees and fearfully, secretly grew in the shade and the wind, starved, crooked, like everything - the wind, storms, and even themselves - afraid.
The slope of the mountain, descending from the loaches, rolling down from below with huge mossy stones, as if squeezed the rim of the mountain, and along this rim, clinging to stones and roots, entangled in the wilderness of currants, hazel and all kinds of woody and herbal dope, hatching out of the stones with a key, ran into the ravine is a river, and the farther it ran, the faster, more full-flowing and more talkative it became.
Across the river, in the near field, half of which had already been emptied and was glowing green with aftermath, sprinkled everywhere with droplets of white and pink clover cones, in the very middle there was a haystack that had settled and was touched by black on a deflection, from which two sharply chopped poles protruded. The second half of the field was covered with almost drooping potato tops, where sunflowers, where hawkweed, sow thistle, densely littered with tufts.
Having made a sharp turn to the ravine, which was to the right of the observation point, the river collapsed into the depths, into the thick of dope, which had grown and impassably woven in it. As if mad, the river flew noisily out of the darkness to the fields, obsequiously wagged between the hills and rushed to the village, which was behind the field with a haystack and a hill on which it rose and dried out from the winds blown by it.
We could hardly see the village behind the hill - only a few roofs, a few trees, a pointed spire of the church and a cemetery at the far end of the village, the same river, which made one more knee and ran, one might say, back to some gloomy, a dark Siberian farmstead, covered with planks, chopped from thick logs, sprinkled with outbuildings, barns and bathhouses on the backs and vegetable gardens. A lot of things had already burned down there, and something else was sluggishly and sleepily smoking, causing ashes and tar smoke from there.
Our infantry entered the farm at night, but the village ahead of us still had to be beaten off, how many enemies there were, what he thought - to fight further or to retreat in a good way - no one knew yet.
Our units dug in under the mountain, along the edge of the forest, across the river, two hundred meters away from us, infantry moved in the field and pretended to be digging in, in fact, the infantrymen went into the forest for dry branches and cooked on ardent fires and ate from the belly potatoes. In a wooden farm in the morning, in two voices, announcing the forest to the very sky, the pigs roared and with a painful groan fell silent. The infantrymen sent patrols there and profited from fresh meat. Ours also wanted to send two or three people to help the infantry - we had one here from the Zhytomyr region and said that no one in the world could better pitch a pig with straw, only sport it. But it didn't burn out.
The situation was unclear. After our observation post from the village, from behind the hill, quite thickly and accurately fired two mortars at once and then began to pour from machine guns, and when bullets, and even explosive ones, go through the forest, hit the trunks, then this already surrenders to continuous fire and a nightmare, the situation has become not only difficult, but also disturbing.
We all immediately earned more friendly, went deeper into the earth faster, an officer with a pistol in his hand ran down the slope of the field to the infantry and crucified all the fires with potatoes, once or twice he hung with his boot to one of his subordinates, forcing them to fill the fires. We heard: “Gouging! Razmundyay! Once ... ”, well, and the like, familiar to our brother, if he has been on the battlefield for a long time.
We dug in, put an end to communication with the infantry, sent a signalman with the apparatus there. He said that all the uncles here, therefore, swept warriors in the Western Ukrainian villages, that they, having drunk potatoes, sleep in all directions and the company commander was all crazy, knowing how unreliable his army was, so that we should be on the alert and in combat readiness.
The cross on the church twinkled like a toy, emerging from the autumn haze, the village was marked by the tops more clearly, cock cries were heard from it, a motley herd of cows and a mixed herd of sheep and goats scattered like insects over the hills came out into the field. Behind the village, hills turning into hills, then into mountains, further - heavily lying on the ground and resting with a blue hump against the skies blurred by the autumn slurry skies is the same pass that Russian troops sought to cross back in the last, in the imperialist war, aiming to quickly get into Slovakia, go to the side and rear of the enemy and, with the help of a clever maneuver, get a bloodless victory as soon as possible. But, having laid down about a hundred thousand lives on these slopes, where we were sitting now, the Russian troops went to seek their luck elsewhere.
Strategic temptations, apparently, are so tenacious, military thought is so inert and so clumsy that even in this, in "our" already war, our new generals, but with the same stripes as the "old" generals, again crowded around Dukla Pass, trying to cross it, get into Slovakia and with such a clever, bloodless maneuver cut off the Nazi troops from the Balkans, withdraw Czechoslovakia and all the Balkan countries from the war, and end the exhausted war as soon as possible.
But the Germans also had their own task, and it did not converge with ours, it was of the opposite order: they did not let us go to the pass, they resisted skillfully and staunchly. In the evening, from a village lying behind a hill, they frightened us with mortars. Mines burst in the trees, since the ditches, cracks and communication passages were not blocked, showered us with fragments from above - at our and other observation posts, the artillerymen suffered losses, and considerable ones, in such a thin, but, as it turned out, destructive fire. At night, the cracks and ditches were dug into the mowing, in which case you would roll down the mowing from the fragments - and the devil himself is not your brother, the dugouts are covered with logs and earth, the observation cells are disguised. It's hot!
At night, several fires lit up ahead of us, a shift company of infantry came and went about its main business - to boil potatoes, but the company did not have time to dig in properly, and in the morning, just from the village they shot, crackled, the Germans ran up the hill with a hubbub in a scattering of Germans, ours like a cow with a tongue licked. The infantry, gorged on potatoes, rattling their bowlers, jogged baggy into the ravine, not irritating the enemy with return fire. Some bow-legged commander yelled, fired his pistol upwards and fired several times at the scuttlers, then caught up with one, another fighter, grabbed them by the collar of their overcoat, then one by one, then two at once knocked to the ground, kicked. But, after lying down for a while, waiting for the frantic commander to roll off to the side, the soldiers ran further or clumsily, but quickly crawled into the bushes, into the ravine.
These fighting warriors were called "Westerners" - it was through the villages of Western Ukraine that they scraped them, shaved them, taught them a little and pushed them to the front.
Traveled up and down by wars, tormented by invasions and devastation, the local land had long ceased to give birth to people of a certain sex, the local women were braver and more generous than the peasants, in character they rather attacked the fighters, while the peasants were “neither te nor se”, that is, the same no man's land, which so dangerously and unreliably separates two women's moves: when a fiancé, crazy with passion, or just a boyfriend, without aiming properly, ends up in a secret place, then this is what is called getting into a mess. In a word, the male part of this nation was and remains half-muzhiks, half-Ukrainians, half-Poles, half-Magyars, half-Bessarabians, half-Slovaks, and still, and still someone. But whoever they were, they were out of the habit of fighting openly, they were afraid of “all enemies”, they could “be” only from around the corner, which they soon successfully proved, after the war, cutting out and knocking out each other, destroying our remaining army and authorities by beating in the back of the head.
