shaking the very around them crumbling wet with water over their heads of the earth.

Suddenly, both remembered about Dawn.

- Dawn - Anna scared her daughter, frightened, and Simka escaped from the hands of her mother, jumped out of the cellar and from her house into the barn, to save her only cow from falling shells from the air. She kicked her out of the barn and ran in the rain and the roar of cannonade into the right side of the forest, passing neighboring gardens by growing wet potatoes, towards partisans coming from the forest. Dawn rushed itself like a tank, knocking everything off with its head and horns, scaring the partisans advancing and scattering to the sides and running screaming at their cow and not even paying attention to Simka Pelagin.

In the full thunderstorm morning darkness, the Germans, having already abandoned everything, ran to where. In the direction of the Wolf Farm in the swamp itself, in tall weeds standing tall in the dark. At the same time, Barbara and Pelagia, together with the scouts, rushed to flee, too, but not in the direction of the village to their abandoned houses, but on the turn beyond the village into the forest itself under cover of their own on the right side of the Snizhny

Barbara shouted to Pelagia on the move - You need to run over the village into the forest! Together with children! It will be safer there!

Barbara and Pelagia seized everyone and ran into the swamps and the forest with their gardens. They were helped by the scouts, and the husband of Varvara Semina himself, carrying the youngest two of his children in his arms.

In almost complete darkness, in the pouring rain and the explosions of shells, many houses of the Snizhnitsa were burning and it was unrecognizable.

The rain poured incessantly, mixing with the burning of the fires.

Burned several houses at once. The former home of Varvara Semina and three more houses along the street along the central road of the village on the very outskirts of Snezhnitsa.

The fire was concentrated mainly, as it was seen along the outskirts of the village, and mainly the barns and agricultural outbuildings of the village burned. Shells fell exactly on the fortifications of the enemy. Accurately by caponier on the outskirts of the gardens of the Snack. The center of the village itself was relatively intact and people fled from the streets into the forest. The villagers fled, hiding in the same way from shelling into the high coastal marsh weeds, along with the Germans, in the direction from where they ran to meet with a cry of URA! partisans.

They were now trying to discourage villagers from Germans entrenched in high weeds. Literally melee grappling with them at the very swamp. At the most overgrown marsh bog grass. Pulling children of old men and women from high grass under the shots at their side of carbines and machine guns. Under a downpour and a flash of lightning. Under the black huge cloud hovering over the swamp and the Snowbox itself.

The villagers who survived under shelling were all knocked off at the very edge of the swamp. Falling straight and pinning the children and themselves to the wet tall grass. Mostly the old men and the old women of the village, and the little children, huddled together in groups and trembling with fear and fright, sat at the very edge of the forest swamp bank. Swamp forest werewolves.

In complete darkness and under the explosions of shells and grenades, nothing could be disassembled. All mixed up. One roar from the shots and explosions interspersed with thunder and lightning.

***

He could not fly out this morning with his squadron to Snezhnitsa. Departure on the cover of attack aircraft was canceled due to bad weather

and poor visibility. He could not fly over the place where his friend Dmitry was shot down.

Sergei Anikanov stood at his Yak, his eyes downcast and his head bent over the plane of the fuselage wing of a combat vehicle.

The air regiment commander, Colonel Zakharchenko, approached him.

“There will be no departure today,” he said to Sergey Anikanov, coming up behind him and putting his hand on his shoulder. “The weather let us down, Seryoga.Elahs do not fly either, and you don’t need to cover anyone. We'll be busy doing nothing - he turned his back on Anikanov and said, leaving - These are the captain's pies. Rest, clear the alarm.

Anikanov stood, silently dropping his gaze as before, and was silent. There, far above that village, there were peals of thunder and the roar of explosions and gunfire. Above the runway of the airfield brightened, and it was already ten in the morning.

Somewhere there was his friend Dmitriy Artemyev, and he was his commander and comrade not in the power to at least somehow help a friend.

Sergey Anikanov did not believe in his death. Then he saw him falling with a parachute over that swamp forest. He saw him alive and did not believe in his death.

Anikanov turned around and began to catch up with Colonel Zakharchenko.

He caught up almost with him, saluting, spoke - Comrade Colonel.

- Yes? What are you captain? - asked Zakharchenko.

- Comrade Colonel - he repeated - Allow me to address.

“I allow the captain,” replied the commander of the regiment.

“When everything is over, Comrade Colonel, will I be able to go to that village?” Will you allow me to visit there Comrade Colonel?

“I allow the captain,” answered Zakharchenko. “I will talk to the commanders of the infantry units and agree to help you in the search for Lieutenant Artemyev.” I myself am not calm about the captain for him, if he is actually alive and sits out somewhere in that swamp and forest.

“Thank you, Comrade Colonel,” the captain Anikanov happily rejoiced at the resolution, and turning, and saluting again, ran towards the company dugout.

Hunting time

Finally it was over.

The partisans quickly seized the outskirts of their village occupied by the Germans and forced the Germans out of the village, taking advantage of the darkness and surprise of the attack.

All German armored vehicles in Snezhnitsa were burned. The SS major tank tankman and the commander of his now completely broken tank corps, Siegfried Walter, also burned down. A potato topper burned on it. And the green peanut potatoes of Anna Pelagina and her daughter Simka were still fried on his blazing twenty-millimeter armor.

The motorcycles and the cars and bodies of the Germans themselves were burning right next to those burning cars and motorcycles. The barns that glowed on the outskirts of the village glowed with a glow, and the one in which Barbara Semina was sitting with Pelageya Pelagina and their children. Some of the houses where shells and mines fell were also burned.

Somehow the rain ended at once, and the black rain cloud of thunderstorm dispersed. Lightning has ceased to sparkle over the Snowball. Only on the horizon there on the front line somewhere far away, there were continuous battles, as before.

The remnants of the defeated Germans rushed, breaking free from the partisans and Russian infantry who were attacking them, into the swamp itself. In the swamp, falling into the quagmire. Some surrendered. Some were captured. Some of the still-living ones were dragged from the edge of the swamp itself, who did not have time for the wounded or dead to drown in the swamp in the pouring rain.

There were both the German infantry of Gunter Kogel, and the tank crews of the SS SS tank Siegfried Walter. All who surrendered surrendered. Those who chose to flee or drowned, or, lost in the morning thunderstorm darkness in the swamp, became the victims of the wolf werewolves.

Their screams were heard all over the forest, when the downpour and low milk-white mist covered the swamp.

Those who heard these screams tried to quickly get out of the outskirts of his closer to the burning village. The old women, baptizing together with the old men, almost hurriedly ran back, not stopping back now in the Snowdrop, won back from the fascists.

On the outskirts of the swamp, only partisans and soldiers remained standing, listening to the howls and growls and the wild wails of the unfortunates there deep among the pines and birches of the swamp forest. They looked with horror there, unable to help those who had disappeared from captivity in that huge forest swamp.

Holding rifles and machine guns on the edge, they looked there, not understanding what was even happening there, but they understood that something terrible was happening there

and terrible. Something worse than even the war itself. Something prohibitive in its bloodthirstiness and cruelty. Something not of this world. That which cannot overcome anything and does not belong to this world of them.

***

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