Swamp Ambush

Seraphim Kozhuba, having locked up his wandering throughout the village district, Borka, who had walked up without supervision, in a barn, sat with policemen on the edge of a bog overgrown with high grass. There was no further road. The clock was twelve. But in Snezhnitsa, work on the defense of the village still did not stop. A clang of caterpillars was heard from a variety of tracked vehicles and tanks. It was the Germans who buried their material warhead in the ground behind the gardens.

Sang loudly on the edge of the swamp night crickets. They drowned out any night rustles around and interfered with listening, and even these sounds from the village and the sound of tanks and cars.

- When they just finish doing it! - Seraphim Kozhub was indignant. - You can't hear a damn thing from the side of the marshes!

- You should know how the elder Seraphim - the policeman Khlyst answered him - The Germans are laborious by origin. Che in the Kogel commandant's office did not enlighten you on the account of German industriousness.

Seraphim said nothing and did not respond to the whimsical comment of the Whip. He remembered when Fritz came to the village this scum from the alien immediately

warmed by a new village authorities. He didn’t know much then. Hooked out somewhere before the arrival of the Germans as they are all policemen. It was to him that the kulak, local and dispossessed in the past, by the Soviet authorities, had to prove loyalty to his German commander-in-chief and loyalty, through the treachery of all whom Kozhuba considered necessary to surrender to the fascists. Here, as the Germans didn’t poured the Germans easily, he remembered and despised his present-day betrayal of his accomplices himself.

It was getting completely dark. Here, at the edge of the swamp, it was cold and full of mosquitoes and midges. They literally jammed the local village policemen. They knew their enemies too and ate them sparingly.

The skin was smarter and more cunning than the rest. He put a mosquito on a mosquito nets, and these three mosquitoes with a gnat simply stuck to death. They barely fended off annoying and blood-sucking swamp insects. Their black overcoats of policemen did not save from this swampy midge.

- Yes, you dad nix in the village brought - blurted Dryk.

“Well, yes,” Pimple continued for him. “Now the Germans are not laughing here!” - he laughed - Look how they got rid of and dig the ground under their tanks.

- Shut up! - shouted at him Whip - Fun to them! We need to catch this flyer! And what we will get trust! Vaughn Seraphim passed his partisan brother and these two women and order!

- Listen, Whip - Pimple told him in a half-whisper - Listen, and the German is the pilot from where did he fall to us too?

- From the sky a slowdown! - snapped at the Pimples Dryk.

- What do you care? - the Whip has snapped - You have your Lyubka Dronina, here and think of it while it is possible.

“It’s just so interesting,” Pimple answered him. “From what airfield is this one as his observance Schenker.” Oh, how the Germans greeted her. Even schnapps poured.

“Look, you are a dunce, a dunce, and remember the name of the Fritz flyer! - stuck in their conversation Kozhuba - And he remembers about snaps! Probably because of the schnapps and remember the name of the German!

“I am the one who is a fool altogether,” Pimple resented.

“Okay, don't be offended. Pimple on the old man, all the way,” said Kozhub, in a half-whisper. “You drop by this hunt into my hut, I'll pour the moonshine on you.” For a wonderful memory.

The whip and the Dryk sprinkled on the sly, above the skin joke. And Pimple continued - Yes, they say his partner is the one that in the forest Russian firmly plucked. In the same place somewhere he must lie with his Messer.

- Yeah - added Dryk - Or separately. The arm is there, the other is there, and in general the legs can be in the river - he showed his head around - I heard his plane ripped apart by an explosion.

The policemen screamed like horses, drowning out the sounds of night crickets on the edge of a wolfish swamp with their wild silly laughter.

- Quiet freaks! - the Whip commanded and asked Seraphim Kozhube a question - This is your ward Vsevolod Artyukhov then ran away - said the Whip - He ran away with his little bastard son. In the forest ran to the partisans. Run away with the fish. We had to hand him over to the commandant's office. We came for them, their house was gone.

“We had to catch them by the river,” said Kozhub's Whip. He looked toward the swamps and forests, sitting in a weed on a swamp hummock - So they disappeared, bypassing the village side by the shore and went to the partisans in the woods. Now there will remain. Everything you need to learn idiots.

- But you, easier, old man! - the Whip was indignant - Easy with us, and that.

But the fact that! - Seraphim sent the trunk to the Whip. Those guided carbines on him.

“Profukali,” said Kozhub Sr., more calmly, dropping the shotgun to the ground. “I was methodically preparing everything, and they profuked.” It was necessary not to look for the Toad, but to take these two fishermen and a brother with partisans.

The toad told me about them, how they didn’t take the fish to the Germans, but to the partisan detachment and knew the road to the partisans.

- Yes, but why did you give him your brother to us and then didn’t pass them right away when they were at your house! - continued the Whip, also lowering the carbine to attack the Seraphim. Seraphim again was silent and looked into the forest.

- Seraphim, and you do not know the way there, eh? - Has already asked a mischievously Whip at Seraphim Kozhuba - Che didn’t tell your native partisan brother? He did not know your work on two fronts? See Kozhuba, just a little, that I will hand you over to the village commandant's office to Kogel himself. Personally rented, got it!

- Shut up Whip! - Roughly Kostub sent him - I will also find something against you! About your business with that German light machine.

- Okay, Seraphim - has already gone back down, and a policeman replied quietly and calmly, squinting and looking angrily at Kozhub - Lost.

- Lost - Seraphim answered him, noticing his gaze. He knew that the Whip was not such a fool as his companions and vindictive rubbish. He will not miss the chance to repay him if that. And so, to save his own before the Germans skin. Probably already thinking how to be steeper than others on horseback.

- Well, you che, men! - vrylat between them Dryk - You end the skirmish then.

- Shut up you're a freak too! - the Seraphim shouted at him - And look in both there on the swamp! I had to organize everything myself and not trust

someone else! Some freaks! - Seraphim looked into the forest and noticed some movement among the pines and birches in the swamp itself.

- Quiet! - he ordered the policemen.

***

Sergei Anikanov could not find peace. He saw his battle friend, Arsentiev Dmitry. He could not believe in his death. He considered him alive, there in those swamps in the forest where he fell with a parachute.

He could not calmly explain to the son of the regiment Vaska, where his beloved friend Uncle Dima had gone. Why? But how? And although the boy knew, not by hearsay, what war is. The boy, who lost his parents and all his relatives in his village, saw how almost every day the pilots of their regiment died in battles over Belarus. But he could not explain directly the reason for the disappearance of Dmitry Arsentiev to the still very young Vaska. He lied to him, and from this Anikanov was bad. He turned on his bed in a field airfield camouflaged front-facing dugout.

He was afraid to hurt the child and said that Uncle Dima would soon arrive, that he had a special secret mission. When he ran after the flight to him at the field dugout and asked unequivocally where Uncle Dima was. And he lied. Lied mechanically. But it happened and maybe even for the better. It is not known how Vasek would have reacted to this. He was quite a child. But this could not continue for a long time. If Dimka is not found during the liberation of the village, you will have to tell the kid about his death, eventually. All of course can be attributed to the war, but the heart of a child. He could not look calmly at the tears and cry of a child. They became Vaska here the closest and dear people in their military air regiment.

He felt with all his guts that Dmitry was alive. That he is somewhere on those forest bolts.Deep in the forest itself. Wounded, ... Read more →