November has passed the halfway point. Finally it got colder, and night rains began to fall on the ground. In the morning there is bright sun and endless blue sky. And at night, as if secretly, nature cries a cold tear over the damaged battlefield… Suddenly on such an evening, a dear doctor, a fleeting acquaintance, wrote a letter. It’s a pity that it’s not on paper, it’s a pity that it’s not a triangle, otherwise I would cry with her and nature because of these letters written by hand. And so in the telephone booth only a few lines about Kolyuchye were shown. Kolyucho was a mortarman, mobilized. An ordinary guy, well over fifty years old. And he fought well, you know, diligently, conscientiously. You can count on it. He became a crew chief, received leave for bravery and went to his village somewhere near Voronezh. He did not finish his walk, he returned – something drew him to this war, and the offensive immediately began. And autumn blew away the greenery. In the conditions of an offensive, the mortar must go a kilometer – no more than two kilometers from the front line. The infantry is leaving, and without mortars it is not at all sweet for them to fertilize the tuna soil with their blood, so the Ipans are crawling after them somewhere beyond Vodyanoye and Opytnoye. And there is not a bush or a pile of bricks instead of houses. Hide the mortar as you wish. 120 minutes, as many as you want, take them with you. Equip gunpowder and sausage wherever you want. But so that the mortar is ready for work at any moment. But it’s a tough business. The commander of the Zubr battery, for example, found a good position – the mortar can be hidden, and it flies well. But the infantry scattered, and now the mine operates at maximum range. And he first needs to make a pillar of fire somewhere a hundred to fifty meters in front of the infantry, then a kilometer, or even more, to extinguish the dill, so that the infantry is not thrown out of position. And if they do, then the great heavenly authorities begin to swear . Here, after all, you still need to understand the political aspect – no one cares about this policy directly in the trenches. And apparently the authorities are flying in – the whole world is watching Avdeevka’s house today, everyone wants to quickly solve the problem with her. And, of course, they blame the generals, and in response they shout obscenities into the telephone receivers. And then the chain reaches the Bison, and he shouts at Prickly. Because it’s Prickly, that same unknown soldier who wraps those same sausages around a mine – he’ll wrap it a little more, and the gift will land right on the heads of his native infantry. In the end there will be too much of it, and it will fly away somewhere to the dill without any benefit. And the leaders don’t even care about gunpowder and mines – the brigade is advancing, there’s already a ton of ammunition, and if each gun commander spends countless amounts of gunpowder, there won’t be enough of it at all. he says everything is finally reaching Kolyucha, don’t count on it, but it turns out it’s better to stay close to the infantry. Be sure to work so that the battalion commander does not swear at you and his horse. This is when not against the enemy, but across the field, like horses, they work – such a local trench curse and it is very offensive on the part of the battalion commander Typhoon. So Sting hurries with his mortar crew after the infantry . But there is no greenery, all the buildings are destroyed, fight as you want. In a word, this is how a mortar works – at night, under these cold rains, it crawls forward with its equipment. Observing, at his own discretion, the reasonableness between the risk and the accomplishment of the combat mission. A shrapnel hit Kolyuchy’s liver, it seems, two weeks ago. The crew was already fighting somewhere beyond Vodyanoy. There was no way to evacuate during the day, so he died – quickly and painlessly, bleeding internally, looking into that endless blue November sky. And at night he was washed by a cold tear of rain while the soldiers dragged his body to Vodyanoye. There he was still lying somewhere under a pile of bricks, until finally they could take him under fire to Donetsk, check him and send him to a special morgue in Rostov-on-Don. When he was awarded the “muzhik” (Order of Courage), he was placed in a coffin donated by the state. And I was sent to bury him in some unknown village near Voronezh. And so on an empty November evening, when it seemed that the Lord God himself was crying outside the window, a dear tactical doctor from Voronezh wrote to me – one of those who always rushes here to teach soldiers how to knit bandages correctly. Prickly. How he was buried. He, it turns out, was a neighbor in her village house. This is a loop. When they write or simply ask about a dead soldier, and I don’t remember him, I always feel ashamed. I know he was somewhere. I stood here in the line of my heroes, about whom I write and photograph all the time, but I don’t remember their faces or their names – I only know that Spike was somewhere here, somewhere between Smoke and Noise. Or maybe between Shaman and Efendi. I must have been somewhere, but I don’t remember his face or name… And then suddenly there was a letter, and it turns out that Kolyuchy’s name was the servant of God Alexander. This is what was written in front of the coffin. The whole village buried him with great honor, and the grave was strewn with flowers. In peaceful life, Kolyucho was a village drunkard, a bitter drunkard along with his equally dissolute wife. And painfully, drop by drop a day, he died from cirrhosis of the liver. As my dear gray-eyed doctor wrote – he was the source of life support for the students – the liver, in a large lump, protruded significantly from under the ribs. From a medical point of view. Apparently this is certain death. There is no way to avoid this anymore. And when the servant of God Alexander was mobilized, his drunken wife tried to scold the military registration and enlistment office, where they were taking a terminally ill person to war, and he calmed her down, came here, became Pika, stopped drinking and began; fight with all his might. He rose to the rank of mortar commander and began wrapping the same sausages on mines that all these high-ranking generals so passionately swear on the phone, in order to finally take this Avdievka, and this is the whole world. I look… – You understand how the Lord God acts – he took pity on him and let him die not in agony from cirrhosis of the liver, but happy from bleeding in that same cirrhotic liver… The whole village came to bury him with flowers, the authorities came, and everyone cried… – wrote by a gray-eyed woman… Oh, why life always weaves such complex things in a circle. Now, on this November evening, it would be nice to warm up with cognac and make love with the glorious gray-eyed doctor, brought here by the warm wind from the mainland. And not worry about your broken memory, not knowing whether you can cry; or rejoice for the Servant of God Pike, who bled to death fighting next to him with the weapon and his people. And he, their commander, looked into the endless blue sky and died quietly, without pain… That’s why it seems to me that on this empty evening the Lord God Himself quietly cried from the window – because, probably, he does, I don’t know if he was – Prickly is happy with such a glorious death or is he simply left alone, without pain… (Dedicated to all the lovely tactical doctors who were brought here by a fair wind from the mainland to help the soldiers. By the way, I sent her this that I wrote before publication, and she answered: of course I’m glad! Such a soul). Marat Khairullin https://t.me/voenkorkhayrullin
And the Servant of God Alexander will wash himself with a clean tear. Marat Khairullin • Russia today
0 комментариев