him on the head with his TT, and dropped him from the numbed fingers of his right hand. He felt the fangs of a wolf stick into the flesh of his neck, and cried out, clutching his thick gray fur with both hands. Under the noise of the cannonade in the woods, his cry was heard, which soon broke off with shooting and the whistle of bullets. The wolf was standing above his not alive and not dead body now. He now stood on the future, the same as he, a forest werewolf.

Bullets whistled through the forest, knocking down the branches of pines and birches and mowing down completely thin trunks of thick marsh bushes. They flew through the forest, hitting and ricocheting about the trunks of large trees, sticking into the core of the trunks and knocking down the bark, wounded marsh trees.

The Germans firing machine guns frightened the dairy cow feeding and feeding the whole village, which was usually grazing near the marshes, as usual in the morning and now her daughter Simka Zorku. And she rushed home, trampling high marshy grass thickets, flying home on her horns and putting on a fence. Motaya to the ground saggy large udders with nipples. A little in the courtyard of the house without knocking down Anna herself, hanging laundry washed with her hands, hooking some more rags on the horns and running into her low half-ruined rotten order barn, chased by the screaming and frightened Anna herself, there only stopped resting her head on the barn wall.

***

It was already eight in the Snezhnitsy. And all the Snowflakes stood on the ears. The Germans were preparing for the defense of the village. They were digging trenches across the streets and the city or fortifications right in the houses of Snezhnitsa. Laying them in sandbags and setting up machine guns. This happened after the headman Kozhub surrendered his brother to them and plans for a possible offensive against the guerrilla village.

Barbara Semina stood at the window and could not understand how they all learned. She was told about this German retraining by Pelageya Zimina, her neighbor and friend. She, having pressed Semina’s children and her two, a boy and a girl, stood behind Varvara and silently, too, looked over her shoulder into the window of her house. She sheltered Semina with the children after the policeman Prysh and her village slut Lyubava Dronina drove her out of the house.

The Germans buried their tanks in the ground behind the gardens and in the gardens themselves. T-III T-IV, the villagers of Snizhnits were quickly buried in the loose soil of the garden, but here were three “Tigers”, it was not easy to bury them. Such hefty machines are hard to dig in a caponier. But the Germans understood very well that if they were not strengthened, they would not only be beaten out of here, but they would not even be able to get out of here if the Russians made an attack and encirclement and rush into the Snezhnitsa. Especially if their tanks break into the village. The Ober Colonel Günter Kogel and his colleague, Major SS tanker Siegfried Walter, personally supervised the fortification of the village.

Simka Pelagina ran into the house of Pelagia Zimina, the local girl - The Germans heard the tanks were being buried. They are preparing for war here! - she shouted loudly and jumped to Varvara Semina, who stood, like many in the village by the window.

“Barbara must go,” Pelagia Zimina said behind her. We must save ourselves and children. Someone must have found out about our impending offensive.

Barbara Semina was visiting Maria Kozhuba, the village headman, and she understood everything.

- It's all him! - suddenly said Barbara Semina - This is he Seraphim! He betrayed his brother and all of us! He lied to me! When I talked about what I need to go with the children in the squad! This creature is worse than the policemen themselves! It is necessary that they learn about this in the detachment and what is being prepared here and now!

At this time, they knocked on the door and ordered to open it on the other side. They were Germans.

- He's a bastard and passed us! - Varvara Semina said loudly and, hugging her children, went to the wall of the house opposite the door.Pelagia Zimina’s children pressed against her, and Pelagia herself went to open the door until Kogel’s soldiers kicked her out.

The Germans broke into the house and grabbed both Pelageya and Barbara, and pushing Simka Pelagin away and the children screaming with fear and panic in tears, they dragged them away from the house to the street. There they were put in an onboard car with an awning and taken from the village.

At this time, the German tank returned to the village from the outskirts of the forest and swamps, and a caponier was also dug out before it. Both the motorcyclists and the Lynx BMP are back. From it all Fritz jumped to the ground. Having shot, machine-gun cartridges, they finished their search punitive patrol on the outskirts of a swamp forest.

The evening was approaching and it was rapidly getting dark. It was already nine and Pelagia and Barbara were thrown out of the car by the Germans and led to the wall of a large collective farm barn.

- What will they do to us Barbara ?! - Pelagia asked her in panic.

- Nothing Pelagia! - Barbara answered her loudly - These creatures will shoot us! That's all!

Pelagia cried - And the children? Our kids?!

Barbara was silent.

They were set facing the wall and machine gunners became about ten meters away from them. They were commanded by a young light belle. He, laughing, said that tomorrow they would most likely be shot in the afternoon with all the villagers. As accomplices of the partisans. Or as usual, hang. In the meantime, Colonel Gunter Kogel ordered them to be closed in the barn. He shone a flashlight on the two rural women standing in front of him at the barn. It's too late, they say, for executions and hangings, but tomorrow will be the very thing.

Pelagia sobbed and looked at Barbara. She, whitening, stood silently and looked at the wall of the barn. Feltfebel ordered his soldiers to open the barn doors and the villages were pushed with machine guns inside and closed. A little later, all their children were brought to them and also thrown into the barn. The night was approaching. And it became cool in the barn and women, and their children huddled together in a stack of straw, basking in each other.

“We can see here and spend the night today,” Varvara said calmly already.

- We are really shot Varya? - in despair asked Barbara Semina Pelageya Zimin.

- I do not know Pelagia - Varvara Semina answered her - I don’t know, but it’s not worth waiting for something good. She pressed her children closer to her, warming them with her body.

***

Captain Sergey Anikanov returned to his regimental airfield. He put the car straight almost across the runway and rolled on it to the very edge, jumped from the cockpit of the holed Messerschmitt to the very tail of the Yak.

Both mechanics flew up to him. He didn’t say anything to them and rushed straight to his headquarters of the air regiment to his regiment commander Colonel Zakharchenko. He ran down to the head bulk of a big dugout and, standing before the colonel on the stand, peacefully attached to the headset

straightened right hand, reported - Task completed, Comrade Colonel! Tanks removed and all Germans in Snezhnitsah.

- Very well, the captain - Zakharchenko answered Anikanova fairly and asked again - Are they all right? How is Arsentev?

- Arsenyev did not return - quietly reported to Colonel Sergey Anikanov - He was shot down over Snezhnitsa itself.

- How did it happen? - he, too, lowering his voice, asked Anikanov anxiously. Tell me.

Anikanov Sergey, looking down, told Zakharchenko how they had to make a couple of extra circles because of the fog over the village, and because of this they subsequently collided with the Messers hunters over the forest and swamps, slightly away from Snezhnytsia. How both took the fight and how Arsentiev shot down a German in the frontal.

“I saw him on a parachute, Comrade Colonel,” said Anikanov Zakharchenko. “I saw him above those bolts and wood. He jumped out of the falling Yak.

“Do you think he's alive?” - asked his colonel Zakharchenko.

- Yes, Comrade Colonel! - Sergey said loudly - He is there in the swamps. We need to save him, Comrade Colonel. He can be captured, and he cannot escape from those swamps himself. I think it is necessary to connect infantry reconnaissance and rescue him from that forest.

“This is now ruled out by the captain Anikanov,” said Sergey Zakharchenko, “There are swamps there, and even if he is alive, we cannot help him now.” But the Germans are unlikely to get it.I think he will sit there before our offensive on the Snack.

- But he! - said, objecting to the colonel, and captain Anikanov corrected himself - But ... Read more →