It was almost 40 years ago
I remember exactly that this story took place in the late 80s of the last century. The fact that by a miracle the surviving machine gunner of the 9th outpost of the 17th Red Banner Brest border detachment Grigory Terentyevich Eremeev lives in the south of Kyrgyzstan, I learned from the legendary book of Sergei Smirnov "Brest Fortress".
Meticulous Sergei Sergeevich wrote that Eremeev now lives in the mining town of Kyzyl-Kiya (pictured). He was one of those who first accepted the battle, and in Kyzyl-Kia worked first as a teacher, and then as a director of an evening school.
After a hard, exhausting ten-year work, Smirnov, as you know, published his epoch-making and courageous novel in the mid-sixties. He was awarded the Lenin Prize. But the malicious envious people could not sit idly by.
Slander was rushed that individual characters of the impregnable citadel turned out to be fictional, and Smirnov was forced to defend both his found living heroes and the masterpiece of literary creation as a whole. But then the worst thing happened for any writer.
In one of the publishing houses, the thousands of copies of the Brest Fortress are completely destroyed. To return the novel to work, the writer receives proposals for a significant alteration of the book and the removal of individual chapters. And the strength of the front-line writer was already at the limit: an incurable disease was developing.
All together served as a kind of trigger for his imminent death. And it happened one day. And with the death of Sergei Sergeevich, a sticky veil of opal plunged into oblivion and his immortal book for almost twenty years. They remained only in libraries - they were not removed and banned. It was then for the next anniversary of the Victory that I took the volume of "Brest Fortress".
Homeland sentries do not sleep
Then I happened to serve in the editorial office of the newspaper "Hourly Rodina" of the Red Banner Eastern Border District in Alma-Ata. Our publication was unique in its own way, fighting, and even the authors were paid good fees. So many venerable Moscow frontier writers often sent their works, which were published from issue to issue.
After reading the chapter "Border Guards" in the book of S. S. Smirnov (pictured), I immediately involuntarily caught hold of the very same lines about the defender of the Brest stronghold Grigory Eremeev. After all, Kyzyl-Kiya is located at a distance of just over five hundred kilometers from Almaty. First, by plane to Osh and a little more by bus, and you are already in a mining town.
With the thought of making material for the Victory Day about the legendary and miraculously surviving border guard of the Brest Fortress, I went to the editor-in-chief Pyotr Mashkovts. One cannot but pay tribute to the editor-in-chief: he was anxious about the Brest border fighters, who were among the first to meet the enemy on the western borders.
By that time, much was known for certain about how courageously and selflessly the soldiers of the outpost of Andrei Kizhevatov behaved in those battles. But it was very tempting to hear some individual details of the deadly battles with the Nazis firsthand. The chief agreed, and so I went on a business trip.
It turned out to be quite simple to find Grigory Terentyevich in Kyzyl-Kiya. I didn’t know his address, but there was a city military registration and enlistment office, where I was received by the military commissar. I listened, and soon I was already walking along one of the city streets, heading to the veteran of Brest. This is his house and the entrance.
I go up to the second floor, the apartment is on the right. I press the call button, and on the threshold - a pretty woman, Eremeev's wife, and he himself was not at home then. I introduce myself - and we sat for a long time in a small room, drinking tea, then Grigory Terentyevich came. We talked with him for several hours.
This is how I learned about the first battles in the border Brest Fortress and the defense of the Terespol Gate. It became known to me for certain how Grigory saved the family of the head of the 9th outpost, Lieutenant Kizhevatov, and destroyed a large group of invaders from his machine gun, going to their rear.
The border guards still held out for several days, and on June 26, Grigory, together with machine gunner Danilov, left on the orders of the outpost commander in order to get to their own and report the tragedy. They left without weapons and with torn green buttonholes.
Both in captivity and in battle - shoulder to shoulder
The Nazis, faced with the heroism and courage of the brave defenders of the border, endured fear and therefore, embittered, immediately shot them upon capture. Soon the border guards were ambushed and captured. They were taken with other soldiers of the Red Army in cattle carriages, not allowing them to sit down or lie down.
They all stood silently, shoulder to shoulder. There were many, hundreds, thousands … Eremeev ended up in the Demblinsky concentration camp, located about a hundred kilometers southeast of Warsaw. Fascist Stalag 307 was located from 1941 to 1944 in the Demblin Fortress and several neighboring forts. Together with Eremeev, about 150 thousand Soviet prisoners of war passed through the camp gates.
Their conditions of detention were bestial: many were housed in the open air or in barracks, where the prisoners slept on the bare stone floor. Almost their only food product was bread made from wood flour, ground straw and grass.
In the fall of 1941 and in the winter of the following year, more than 500 people were killed in the camp almost every day. The Nazis preferred, having fun, to finish off the weak and exhausted, and also staged mass executions for the slightest alleged offense.
With the onset of the spring of 1942, the prisoners were forced to eat the green grass that had just hatched. Sick and wounded prisoners were given fatal injections by the Nazis and then disposed of in mass graves.
All this is damn tired of Eremeev. With a group of prisoners of war, he makes an attempt to escape. It turned out to be unsuccessful, they were handed over by their own pitiful Red Army soldier, to whom the fascist henchmen promised an extra ration of bread and better conditions of detention.
Grigory Terentyevich was beaten for a long time, kept in a punishment cell, more than once taken to be shot. Usually, the guards fired one round over the heads of the prisoners and they were again taken to the barracks, or thrown there in the middle of the camp. But at the same time they chose one or two of the prisoners and finished them off with a shot at point-blank range. Who exactly would have to be shot this time - no one knew. Such was the intimidation and amusement of the fascists.
This did not break Eremeev. After a while, he again runs with his comrades. But a handful of prisoners did not manage to stay free for a long time. The SS men caught them one by one, then hounded them with dogs. The heavily bitten prisoners had to heal lacerated wounds for a long time.
They festered, did not drag on, it is clear that no one was going to provide anyone with bandages or medicines. There were several more mass escapes in the camp. And in each group there was certainly a border guard Eremeev from the Brest citadel.
In 1943, prisoners began to be transported to Italian concentration camps, and so Eremeev ended up in Italy. It seems that the conditions of detention in the camp are better, but at the first opportunity the border guard left for an escape. This time it turned out to be successful.
So Grigory Terentyevich ended up in the ninth Yugoslav corps, where he fought in the Russian partisan brigade with the same, like him, who were captured by Soviet soldiers.
"", - said Eremeev. He was first given the English manual Bren Mk1, and then the weapons of his enemies. With this impeccable captured MG-42, popularly nicknamed the "brush cutter", he deftly and fearlessly smashed the Nazis and their accomplices in the mountains. With battles and fellow partisans, being already a platoon commander, Eremeev reached Trieste. There the war ended for him.
Long way home
Returning to the Soviet Union was not easy. He, as a former prisoner of war, had to go through this difficult path for him through interrogations, humiliation, humiliation. Eremeev was probably already in the Soviet camp. So they did then with many who had been at least once in Nazi captivity.
Even though he repeatedly escaped from the death camps and ended the war in the partisan Yugoslav corps, Eremeev did not return to Buguruslan. On the checkpoints, changing trains and carefully covering the traces of his short stay at the stations, he decided to retire to the Kyrgyz town of Kyzyl-Kiya.
In this quiet and peaceful place, where the whole life of the people around him at that time was associated with coal mining, Eremeev began to teach. Soon he met his future wife, Maria Timofeevna. They got married, but never found children. All male Eremeev was recaptured by the Nazis in the camps. But somehow it didn't work out in another way.
They had a small house on the outskirts of the city. But Grigory Terentyevich's health was severely undermined in the death camps, he was often ill, and the doctors advised him to move closer to the sea. They left for Anapa, lived for a year or two, but the veteran did not get better, and decided to return again.
- Have you found a new home? I asked.
- No, - said to me, looking down, Eremeev was already at dinner. We all ate food in the same room, not in the kitchen. At first I did not attach any importance to this, and now it began to dawn on me, but whose real living space is it?
“The apartment of our friends,” Maria Timofeevna said with a sadness in her voice. - And we rent one room from them. We have been living here for several years. True, we are standing next to each other, they promise to give us a separate house sometime.
Apartment for a veteran
After lunch, we talked for a long time, and at some moment Grigory Terentyevich said that he decided to write a book about his life and his experiences. As Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov - this he especially emphasized then.
So far, nothing has been possible - to fill only a few dozen sheets of yellow newsprint with text. He showed them to me. I took the pages, reading the typed lines. After a few sheets, the manuscript took on a different look - they wrote with a fountain pen. But the handwriting was elegant, almost calligraphic, and most importantly, it was readable with pleasure.
“Let's publish it in our border newspaper,” I said at some moment, looking up from reading. Grigory Terentyevich looked at me inquiringly, then smiled and said:
- Okay, only the first chapter so far, if you don't mind, I have a second copy. The rest will be sent by mail later.
He gave me several carbon-copy pages. We exchanged addresses, and, saying goodbye, I left, hurrying to get to the bus station before dark and leave for Osh.
When we were passing by the building of the city executive committee, I was suddenly struck by the idea to stop by and find out about the progress of the queue for an apartment for a veteran. Somehow the fact that the hero-border guard of Brest was taking a corner from his acquaintances did not fit into my mind at all.
I was received by a high boss. He was very surprised that a business trip had thrown me, a border guard officer, into their city. I looked at him and all over it felt that as a correspondent for the district newspaper, I couldn’t imagine anything for his level of authority. He's just doing me a favor.
When I started talking about Eremeev, he said that he was aware of this issue, and Grigory Terentyevich would definitely get an apartment. When - he did not say, but then for some reason I heard that very soon.
Already saying goodbye and shaking his outstretched hand, I said that after the veteran found a home, I would try to tell about this in detail not only on the pages of the district newspaper, but also in the regional and republican Kyrgyz newspapers, as well as in Izvestia.
I saw the sparkle in his eyes
At that very moment, the official's eyes flashed with joy. It seemed to me that I had found the very point when a few lines in an all-Union newspaper would help him, an ordinary city boss, find a significant flight in the further advancement of the career ladder.
I left. Soon the first chapter from the veteran's book was published in the "Homeland Watch". A few days later, a letter arrived at the editorial office. Eremeev reported that almost the next day, officials of all stripes unexpectedly came to him and began to helpfully talk and offer different options for apartments.
Only all of them, as it turned out later, were completely unsuitable for normal living. Either a room in a lopsided barrack and with a toilet almost a kilometer away, or an apartment that no repairs will be able to put in order.
“This is how they wiped their feet on me. At some moment I felt myself on the camp parade ground and I was already being led to execution."
Grigory Terentyevich wrote nervously, every now and then mentioning why I came to his city, and also visited the city executive committee.
I immediately showed the letter to the editor-in-chief. We examined the situation, and it was decided to go on a business trip again to find out thoroughly on the spot how it is possible to humiliate the defender of the Brest Fortress. And also give Eremeev several copies of the district newspaper with its first publication.
I went straight from the bus station to the city executive committee. And immediately to the already familiar office to the chief. He was just dumbfounded when he saw me. Without further ado, he went into the waiting room and soon appeared with a piece of paper. As it turned out, this was a list of all the participants of the Second World War, living in the city and in need of housing. Eremeev's surname was on the list, as I remember now - 48.
We are waiting for housewarming
Then an impartial conversation began. No, we did not swear, but each one proved his own: he - that for him all veterans are the same, I - that the war, if he remembers, began with the Brest Fortress.
We kept raising our voices at each other. I then told him a lot about the border guard Eremeev: what he had to endure in the dungeons of concentration camps, about his daring escapes and brave forays into the camp of enemies.
My arguments, as it turned out, could not bring the necessary dividends. Then I had to throw out my trump card - let the whole country know about such a boorish attitude towards the hero of Brest. And there will be, there will certainly be publications in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia.
And that was enough. No wonder - then the officials were afraid of the printed word like the devil of incense, which today is hard to believe. Now: write, do not write - you will surprise very few people.
As I left, I handed the official several typewritten pages with the text of a future article. It is clear that it was a copy. And the original will go to the editorial office in a day or two. So I promised him.
Absolutely not admitting to myself that he had just switched to ordinary blackmail in his office, he reached the house where a veteran border guard rented a room in one of the apartments and with difficulty pushed several copies of the district newspaper into the narrow slot of the mailbox. Then he left.
He did not meet with Eremeev. What could I tell him then, except that I was helpless to make a helpless gesture. Only a week passed and a telegram from a married couple of the Eremeevs unexpectedly arrived at the editorial office.
“We are waiting for you on Saturday for housewarming. Thank you very much. Sorry what is wrong."
I went to the editor-in-chief. This time Pyotr Dmitrievich only smiled and said:
“You have done the main thing. The Eremeevs got an apartment. So go and work."
Grigory Terentyevich sent separate chapters from the future book to the editor for some time. They were printed and all published numbers of newspapers with publications were sent to the veteran of Brest. Sometimes, on especially significant days, we also began to exchange greeting cards. It was so at that time.
Just a year later
A little over a year later, I happened to work on a business trip in the Osh border detachment. Together with the head of the political department, Major Sergei Merkotun, we went to the outposts and one day our UAZ was at a fork in the road, one of which led to the city of Kyzyl-Kiya.
“Let's visit the veteran of the Brest Fortress, see how he lives,” I suggested to the head of the political department.
Sergei Andreevich did not object. We quickly reached the city, found a street, a house, and went up to the second floor. Here is the apartment of the hero-border guard.
The door was opened for us, as on my first visit, Maria Timofeevna. Her amazement and delight knew no bounds. Grigory Terentyevich was in the hospital, old wounds and the experience made themselves felt. To be honest, we were all together happy about the brand new two-room apartment, pleasant atmosphere, but did not stay long - the service. Unless we drank tea on the way and talked.
Many years later, I learned that the Eremeevs, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, moved to the city of Buguruslan. It is likely that they were able to sell that apartment, well, good.
The legendary border guard Eremeev left us in 1998 and was buried in the village of Alpayevo, Buguruslan district, Orenburg region. In the last days before leaving for immortality, he was often seen in the garden under a spreading apple tree.
At the same time, he always held in his hands his literary work of life - the book "They defended the Motherland." It can hardly be found now, except perhaps with relatives - Buguruslanians.
Such is the unusual fate of Grigory Terentyevich Eremeev - a great man who went through the first battles on the border, survived the horror and abomination of the Nazi death camps, fought, forgotten and rediscovered to the whole world as a hero of Brest by the writer Sergei Sergeevich Smirnov.
Once I happened to help him. Knocked out an apartment thanks to an ordinary printed word. And I'm proud of that! Although that article about boorish officials remained unpublished.
