Three forts of the Brest Fortress and a dozen pillboxes of the "Molotov Line" of the Brest fortified area are located on the left bank of the Western Bug, that is, behind the current cordon - in Poland. These are the most unexplored objects of the BUR - the Brest fortified area, which stretched 180 kilometers along the western border of the USSR. It is they who are covered with the densest veil of obscurity.
Tourists are not taken here, and a compatriot does not step on the concrete steps of forgotten forts and bunkers. The fact that fierce battles took place here, battles for life and certain death, are evidenced only by huge - in the span of the arms - holes in the walls, from which twisted thick steel rods protrude. As it is sung in the song about the cruiser "Varyag", neither the stone nor the cross where they lay down will say …
Probably, it was the shortest international flight in my life: the Brest-Terespol electric train crosses the bridge over the Bug and now in five or seven minutes the Terespol train station. But each of these minutes makes the heart squeeze anxiously - after all, you are not just moving across the border, but across the initial line of the war. This is the Rubicon that the Wehrmacht crossed seventy-five years ago. There on the left, while still on our bank, the old border bunker, which covered this bridge in 1941. The train slowly enters the restricted area, where pedestrians are not allowed to enter, and a plowed control-track strip wrapped in barbed wire blocks the path to the west. There are stumps of pillars sticking out of the water from a long-burnt down crossing. It seems that a little more and you will see a German soldier in a deep helmet, who is still marking time at the frontier post of the Governor General of the Third Reich.
It doesn't matter that it is a Polish zholnezh who is watching your carriage with a bored look. What is important is that he is in a foreign uniform, what is important is that at the Polish border airfields, from which the forty-first German bombers took off in June, the 41st German bombers are now again - combat aircraft of a hostile military bloc.
Terespol
A one-story almost town, where the streets are named, as in the song of Yuri Antonov: Akatsievaya, Klenovaya, Lugovaya, Topolevaya, Kashtanovaya. But it was not without politics either - the main street is named after the Home Army, the street of Cardinal Vyshinsky … In the center of the city there is an old casemate, a former powder storage for the garrison of the Brest Fortress. It was here that on the day the war began, the headquarters of the 45th Infantry Division was located, it was from here that orders were given to the regiments - "fire!" Now harvests of strawberries and champignons are kept in the cool twilight of the casemate.
On the calendar June 21 … To tune in to the wave of that time, you must first grasp, feel its nerve, you must come to a balanced state of mind: let it be as it will, you must not interfere in anything, want nothing, let everything go to the mercy of fate. So I get into the first taxi I come across and ask them to take me to the nearest hotel. The taxi driver takes me at his own discretion towards the border. A wonderful place - a two-storey green cottage with a signboard in German for some reason "Grὓn". It stands 900 meters from the Bug branch, behind which the Western Island in the Brest Fortress can be seen. To the left of the road is an old Russian cemetery, founded in the days of the Russian Empire. On the right is my unassuming refuge; he stands on the edge of the grass stadium where German officers played football in the summer of 1941, who lived in the same two-story house as in the barracks. A strange neighborhood of a cemetery and a stadium. But I need to get from here in 1941, so I leave the Grün-Hotel and go to the city along the road that once connected Terespol and Brest through the fortress. Then it was called Varshavka and was a strategic route that passed through the central island of the fortress. The citadel was hung on it like a huge brick castle. Now "Varshavka" leads only to the cemetery and to the hotel, to the dead end of the border strip. And the new road Minsk-Brest-Warsaw bypasses the fortress from the south. But I got exactly where I need to - in the spatial coordinates of THAT time.
The past does not disappear without a trace. It leaves shadows, sounds and even smells; walls and steps remain from it, letters and documents remain from it … To see these shadows, to hear sounds, you just need to sharpen your eyesight and hearing, you need to look closely at the little things and listen to what usually flies past your ears.
For example, these are the echoes of the harmonica. An old disabled man plays it in the station square. I get closer, throw a few zlotys into his cap, sit down on his bench and listen to slightly shrill, but still slender chords. Wasn't that how some of the German soldiers who landed here, at this station, at the beginning of the summer of 1941, also played?
With the flow of people, I got to the city center, where instead of the town hall or other appropriate building, a gray-concrete bunker with riveted armored dampers dominates. It was the old powder magazine of the Brest Fortress, which was intended for the westernmost forts of the fortress No. 7 and No. 6, located in the Terespol district. On the night of June 22, the headquarters of the 45th Infantry Division was located here, it was from here that the order was given to storm the bastions of the Brest Fortress.
A flock of cyclists overtook me on their way to the hotel. And then it closed: here it is! Similarly, German cyclists rushed along this road to the border. They had to rush from a kilometer in order to immediately join the battle. The fact is that at first they were taken away from the border, through which "nebelwerfers" were supposed to fly - missiles fired at the fortress from field installations. These shells had not yet been tested in real battles, they flew very inaccurately, and in order not to hit their own, the assault company was taken away, and then, shortening the throw time, the soldiers got on their bicycles and rushed to the starting line. The rocket launcher battery was, rather, in the stadium. Here, nothing prevented the "nebelwerfer" from gaining altitude. And on the other side of the Russian cemetery, most likely, there were positions of super-heavy self-propelled mortars of the Karl type. They were named after the ancient Germanic gods of war - "Thor" and "Odin". They were brought to Terespol by rail, and they crawled under their own power to the designated line. Fortunately, it is very close. "Karlov" was accompanied by tracked loaders of 600-mm shells, which were fed to the guns by cranes, because concrete-piercing shells weighed from one and a half to two tons (more precisely, 2170 kg - of which 380, or even 460 kg of explosives). These monsters were created to break through the "Maginot Line", but the French did not provide them with such an opportunity: they surrendered the front faster than the mortars were brought up. Now they were targeting the forts of the Brest Fortress. Fortunately, its pipes and towers are visible to the naked eye - right from the road along which a flock of carefree cyclists just flew away.
Kodensky bridge
Colonel General Leonid Sandalov was almost the only memoirist who devoted his book to the first days and weeks of the outbreak of the war. The troops of the 4th Army (Sandalov was the chief of staff of this army) were the first to take on the most powerful blow of the Wehrmacht in Brest, as well as to the south and north of it. South of Brest, there was a small town called Koden, cut by the Bug into two parts - the western, once Polish, and in 1941 - the German half, and the eastern - the Belarusian-Soviet side. They were connected by a large highway bridge, which was of strategic importance, since the road from Biala Podlaska passed through it, bypassing Brest and the Brest fortress, which made it possible to cut the Warsaw highway between Brest and Kobrin, where the army headquarters was located, by the shortest route. Sandalov recalls:
“… To seize the bridge at Kodin, the Nazis resorted to an even more insidious trick. At about 4 o'clock, they began to shout from their bank that the German border guards should immediately cross the bridge to the head of the Soviet frontier post for negotiations on an important, urgent matter.
Ours refused. Then from the German side fire was opened from several machine guns and guns. Under cover of fire, an infantry unit broke through the bridge. The Soviet border guards, who were guarding the bridge, died in this unequal battle with the death of heroes.
The enemy unit captured the bridge, and several tanks jumped across it to our side …”.
I am going from Terespol to Koden to visit the site of the former military tragedy, to take pictures of the bridge … The bus does not go to Koden often. I missed the next flight, so I take a taxi, since the prices here are not at all in Moscow. The taxi driver, an elderly Pole with a gray mustache, who called himself Marek, was very surprised at the named route.
- How many taxis here, and for the first time I'm taking a Russian to Koden!
The taxi driver, like most of his colleagues, was very talkative, and I had to talk about the events of seventy years ago that took place on the Kodensky bridge.
- There is no bridge there!
- How it is not, if I saw it on the map.
- Map by map, and I live here, and how many times I have been to Koden, I have not seen any bridge.
- There must be a bridge!
- I served as a sapper in the Polish Army. I myself have built bridges over rivers more than once. If there was a bridge in Koden, I would know for sure.
So, for a dispute, we drove into a picturesque place on the banks of the Bug, where the temples of three confessions converged - Catholic, Orthodox and Uniate. Narrow and low streets in the colors of the June season - mallows, lilacs, jasmine … We slow down at the first oncoming passer-by:
- Where is the bridge over the Bug?
- We don't have any bridge.
Marek triumphs: "I told you so!" But a passer-by gives advice:
- And you ask the old priest. He was born here even before the war.
We enter the courtyard of the monastery complex, looking for an old priest, who was born in Koden already in 1934. In 1941 he was seven years old and he heard the first salvoes of the great war.
- The bridge? Was. Yes, only in the 44th year it was drilled out, and they did not begin to restore it. Only one embankment remained on the shore.
The priest showed us the direction along the river, and Marek and I immediately set off. Now I looked at him triumphantly: there was a bridge after all! We made our way for a long time along the coastal windbreak. The places here were clearly untouched. Finally, they stumbled upon an overgrown earthen embankment, which broke off at the very edge of the water. This was the entrance to the Kodensky bridge. On it stood three old freight wagons, adapted either for warehouses, or for change houses. Perhaps it was in such cars that the Wehrmacht soldiers arrived here. And on the edge of the embankment there was a white and red border post. Exactly the same Germans broke here and threw it into the Bug in September 1939.
Much later I learned that “since June 22, 1941, the 12th company of the III Brandenburg battalion under the command of Lieutenant Schader was also in the vanguard of Guderian's shock tank units. It was this unit, a few minutes before the artillery preparation that began at 3.15 am on June 22, 1941, captured the Kodensky bridge located south of Brest across the border river Bug, destroying the Soviet sentries guarding it. The capture of this strategically important bridge was immediately reported to Guderian personally. Establishing control over the Kodensky bridge made it possible, already in the morning of the first day of the war, to transfer units of the 3rd Panzer Division of Major General Model that were part of Guderian's group on it and launch their offensive in the northeastern direction, having the primary task of cutting the Warsaw highway between Brest and Kobrin …
On that, on the Belarusian bank of the Western Bug, the continuation of the embankment could be seen. It was there that the blood of our border guards was shed. I would like to know their names! How strange: the names of the attackers are known, but the names of the heroes-defenders are not.
Tales of the Bug Forest
The most fierce battles in the BUR took place in the sector of the 17th machine-gun and artillery battalion, which occupied the pillboxes near the village of Semyatichi. Today it is the territory of Poland. But it is necessary to get there, this is the main goal of my expedition. Even in Brest, experienced people warned me: they say, you shouldn't meddle in this wilderness alone. “You never know what? You have an expensive camera. You run into local "Natsiks", and the camera will be taken away from the Muscovite, and they will stick it on the neck. You yourself see what the situation is. " The situation, of course, did not please: the "hawks" of Polish politics went to war against the monuments to Soviet soldiers. Pillboxes are also monuments to military heroism, the most impressive "monuments" … It is unlikely that they will be blown up. But still, while there is an opportunity, one must visit the holy places, take pictures of what has survived …
If you look long and intently into the dark waters of the river of oblivion, then something will begin to peep through them, something to appear … So it is with the pillboxes of the BUR. Not all of them, but faces, names, combat episodes, exploits appear through the veil of time … Belarusian, Russian, German historians - the descendants of those who fought and died here - gather information bit by bit about the June battles on this land. Through their efforts, the names of Captain Postovalov, Lieutenant Ivan Fedorov, junior lieutenants V. I. Kolocharova, Eskova and Tenyaev … They were the first to meet the most powerful blow of the Wehrmacht, many of them had the share of forever unknown soldiers.
Experienced search engines say that before an important discovery, unusual things always happen, as if someone from those whom you are looking for is giving signs.
It is important for me today to find the pillbox "Eagle", and so far no one is giving signs, not even a tourist card. The pillboxes are marked on it, but which one is "Eagle", and which one is "Falcon", and where is "Svetlana" - this must be determined on the spot. I need the Eagle. This commander's five-round bunker lasted longer than the others - more than a week. It contained the commander of the 1st company of the Urovsky battalion, Lieutenant Ivan Fedorov, and a small garrison of twenty men.
At the village of Anusin, I say goodbye to the driver of the ride. The pillbox "Eagle" should be looked for in the local district.
My old friend, a researcher at the central archive of the Ministry of Defense Taras Grigorievich Stepanchuk, discovered a report from the political department of the 65th Army to the Military Council of the 1st Belorussian Front. It states that after the 65th Army's formations entered the state border of the USSR in the area of the village of Anusin in July 1944, Soviet soldiers in one of the bunkers found the bodies of two people lying on the floor covered with cartridges, lying at a crushed machine gun. One of them, with the stripes of a junior political instructor, did not have any documents with him. In the pocket of the second soldier's tunic, there is a Komsomol ticket No. 11183470 in the name of the Red Army soldier Kuzma Iosifovich Butenko. Butenko was the orderly of the company commander, Lieutenant Fedorov. This means that the report was about the commander's bunker "Eagle". Together with Lieutenant I. Fedorov in the bunker there were medical assistant Lyatin, soldiers Pukhov, Amozov … It was not possible to establish the name of the junior political instructor.
“The Russians did not leave long-term fortifications even when the main guns were out of action, and defended them to the last … The wounded pretended to be dead and fired from ambushes. Therefore, there were no prisoners in most of the operations,”the report of the German command said.
I delve deeper into a roadside pine forest, which, according to the map, turns into the very forest where our bunkers are.
It is interesting to build pillboxes. First they dig a well. Then concrete walls are erected around it. Water goes to the solution, and then to cool the weapons, to drink for the garrison. The long-term firing point starts from the well. They say that local old dowsers helped our sappers find underground water veins.
Pillboxes are a kind of concrete ships, submerged along their "waterline" into the ground, into the ground. They even have their own names - "Eagle", "Fast", "Svetlana", "Falcon", "Free" …
“The finished pillboxes were two-story concrete boxes with walls 1, 5–1, 8 meters thick, dug into the ground along embrasures. The upper casemate was divided by a partition into two gun compartments. The layout highlighted a gallery, a vestibule that diverted the blast wave from the armored door, a gas lock, an ammunition storage, a sleeping compartment for several beds, an artesian well, a toilet … from 45 mm, coaxial with a DS machine gun. By the beginning of the war, the armament of pillboxes was kept on conservation, ammunition and food were stored in company and battalion depots. The garrisons of bunkers, depending on their size, consisted of 8-9 and 16-18 people. Some accommodated up to 36-40 people. As a rule, junior space crew officers were appointed commandants of bunkers,”writes the BUR historian.
But these "concrete ships" turned out to be unfinished … One can only imagine what it would be like to fight on ships standing on the slipways. Crews do not abandon their ships, pillbox garrisons did not abandon their fortifications. Each of these caponiers was a small Brest fortress. And what happened in the great citadel was repeated here, only on its own scale.
According to the stories of old-timers in Brest, the garrisons of unfinished, unbound pillboxes held out for several days. The enraged Nazis walled up the entrances and embrasures. One such "blind" concrete box, in which not only embrasures and an entrance, but even the leads of communication pipes were walled up, were recently discovered by Belarusian search engines.
I walk along a forest path - away from the village, away from prying eyes. On the right, along the edge of an extraordinary beauty, there is a rye field with cornflowers and daisies. Behind him are plantations of hops and strawberries … I can't even believe that in these serene, free-standing places, tanks were roaring, heavy guns were beating with direct aim at the concrete walls, flamethrower flames burst into the embrasures … I can't believe that these pastoral copses were looking for their prey - “green brothers ", Merciless" akovtsy "… But it was all here, and the forest kept it all in its green memory. Perhaps that is why it was so anxious in my soul, despite the flooded singing of the Bug nightingales, the whistling of thrushes and jays. The sun was already scorching from the zenith, but I still could not find a single bunker in this forest. As if bewitched them. As if they went to this land, covered with coniferous crust, thick bushes. I oriented the map along the road: everything is correct - this is the forest. And Bug is near. Here it is, the Kamenka river, here is road No. 640. And there are no bunkers, although according to all the rules of fortification, they should be right here - on a hill, with an excellent view of all the main roads and bridges here. Now the paths have all disappeared under the thickets of wild ferns. And where there is a fern, there, of course, the evil spirits are dancing around. There was clearly an anomalous zone here: for no apparent reason, the electronic clock on his hand suddenly stopped. And the pine trees grew curves-curves, so similar to the "drunken forest" that on the Curonian Spit. And then the raven screamed - bursting, rolling, disgusting. As if threatening or warning about something.
And then I prayed: “Brothers! - mentally I shouted to the defenders of the bunkers. - I came to you. I came from so far away - from Moscow itself! Respond! Show yourself! I wandered on. I wanted to drink terribly. If only where to find a trickle. He walked about ten paces and was dumbfounded: a bunker was looking right at me with empty black eye sockets! As it was built 75 years ago, it stood in full growth - unburied, unbunched, open to all shells and bullets. A huge hole - in the span of the arms - gaped in his forehead.
I recognized him right away - from an old photograph taken for my happiness from the same angle from which I looked at the bunker and I - from the southern corner. In the wall to the right there is a steel-rimmed embrasure, and in the forehead there is a hole, most likely from a special concrete-piercing shell. Soldiers' souls flew out of these embrasures and holes …
Spruce cones lay on the sand like spent cartridges.
That picture was taken in the summer of 1944, and therefore the area around is open, adapted for firing, but now it is pretty overgrown with pine forests and bushes. It is no wonder that you can only notice this five-amber fortress up close. The souls of unsung soldiers, hiding under the combat ceiling of the bunker, heard me, moreover, they treated me to strawberries that grew here around the entire shaft … They gave me large red ripe berries! What else could they give me? But the souls of the slain enemies sent ticks and gadflies at me. Probably, they themselves turned into them.
I went inside through a draft - a kind of "canopy" opened from the sides, in order to divert blast waves from the door of the main entrance. In the semi-dark casemates there was a damp cold, which in the afternoon heat was perceived as a blessing. A cold drop fell on my crown: salt icicles hung from the ceiling, like stalactites. Drops of moisture collected on them, like tears. The bunker was crying! Rusty rebar stuck out everywhere. The builders managed to fix the clamps for the ventilation pipes, but did not have time to mount the pipes themselves. This means that the bunker fighters were suffocating from powder gases … From the fighting compartment - a square hole into the lower floor, into the shelter. Everything is littered with plastic bottles, household waste. The emergency exit was also blocked … I got out and went to look for the rest of the pillboxes. And soon I came across two more mighty concrete boxes. Each pillbox here is a Russian island in a foreign land. Someone was not sorry to leave her, and they went to the east, to their own limits. And the BUR fighters were following the order - "Don't leave the bunkers!" And they did not go out, accepting a martyr's death. It was even more painful because around, as now, life was just as rampant - herbs and wild cherries were blooming …
Someone threw tanks - the fuel ran out. And they didn't even have such an excuse. They held out to the last.
One of the companies of the pulbat occupied positions near the village of Moshona Krulevska. It was commanded by Lieutenant P. E. Nedolugov. The Germans fired pillboxes from cannons, bombed them from planes, they were stormed by Einsatz sapper teams with flamethrowers and explosives.
But the garrisons held out to the last bullet. In the bunker, which now stands on the northeastern outskirts of the village of Moshkona Krulevska, there were six Red Army men and twelve lieutenants who had just arrived from the schools and did not have time to receive weapons on the fateful night. All died …
The two-embrasure artillery and machine-gun bunkers "Svetlana" and "Sokol" and several other field structures covered the highway from the bridge over the Bug river on Semyatichi. In the first hours of the battle, a group of border guards and soldiers of the battalion headquarters joined the defenders of the pillboxes. For three days the bunker "Svetlana" fought under the command of junior lieutenants V. I. Kolocharova and Tenyaev. Kolocharov, fortunately, survived. From his words, it is known that among the "Svetanovites" the machine gunner Kopeikin and the gunner of the gun Kazakh Khazambekov, who in the very first hours of the war damaged a German armored train that drove onto the bridge, distinguished themselves. The armored train crawled away. And Khazambekov and other gunners transferred fire to the pontoon crossing; the enemy infantry crossed the Bug along it …
I leave the forest to the railway embankment.
This pillbox is most likely the "Falcon". Its embrasures look exactly at the railway bridge across the Bug. The riveted trusses of the large double track bridge are covered in rust, the track is overgrown with grass. It looks as if the battles for this strategic object ended only yesterday. Nobody needs the bridge today. Traffic on this section of the road to the Belarusian side is closed. But how many lives were laid for him both in forty-first and forty-fourth … Now he stands like a monument to those who covered him. And the bridge stands and two bunkers at a distance - one of the rigid structures of the "Molotov line". At least take excursions here. But excursions tend to the "Maginot Line". Everything there is safe and sound: the weapons, and the periscopes, and all the equipment, and even the army bunks in the casemates are filled. There is something to see, there is something to twist, touch, not that here - on the "Molotov line", where everything is broken, crushed, punctured. As you know, there were no battles on the Maginot Line.
The importance of the Brest fortified area was assessed by the commander of the 293rd Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht, which until June 30, 1941 stormed the positions of the 17th OPAB near Semyatichi: “There is no doubt that overcoming the fortified area after its completion would require heavy casualties and the use of heavy weapons of large caliber.
About the commandant of the Brest fortified area, Major General Puzyrev … It is very easy to throw a stone at this person, and if it is easy, then they throw it. So the author of popular books Mark Solonin threw a weighty cobblestone at him: “War is like war. In any army in the world, there is confusion, panic, and flight. That is why there are commanders in the army, in order to cheer up some in a similar situation, to shoot others, but to achieve the fulfillment of a combat mission. What did the commander of the 62nd URa do when crowds of Red Army men who had abandoned their firing positions came running to his headquarters in Vysokoe? “The commander of the Brest fortified area, Major General Puzyrev, with part of the units that had retreated to him in Vysokoe, on the very first day withdrew to Belsk (40 km from the border. - MS), and then further to the east …” How is it - “withdrew ?.. What was Comrade Puzyrev going to get in the rear? A new mobile bunker on wheels?
It is easy to sneer at a person who cannot answer you in any way … No one knew better than General Puzyrev how unprepared his 62nd fortified area was for serious military operations. Recently appointed to the post of commandant, he drove along the entire "Molotov line" and saw with his own eyes that the concrete "shield of the country of the Soviets" was still to be patched up. And that is to say - in terms of the scope of construction work, the BUR could be equated with such a "construction of the century" as Dneproges. Despite the fact that dozens of bunkers were close to the completion of construction and installation work, almost all of them did not have fire communication with each other, that is, they could not cover each other with artillery fire. This meant that teams of enemy demolitions were able to get close to them. Caponier guns were not installed everywhere, ventilation pipes, communication lines were installed … 2-3 months were not enough for the BUR to become a unified defense system. And so the barrage of the main attack of the invasion fell on the fortified area. By noon on June 22, communication between Puzyrev's headquarters and the support areas was interrupted once and for all. There was no communication with the higher command - neither with the headquarters of the 4th Army, nor with the headquarters of the district, which became the headquarters of the Western Front.
Scattered groups of sappers and military builders arrived in Vysokoe, where Puzyrev and his headquarters were located. They had no weapons. What was there for General Puzyrev to do? Organize anti-tank defense with shovels and crowbars? Go to the nearest bunker and die heroically there with a rifle before being captured on the way? Shoot himself, as did the commander of the Western Front Air Force, General Kopets, after the devastating Luftwaffe attack on his airfields? But he had a headquarters, with people and secret drawings, diagrams, plans, maps. A lot of people came to him - Red Army men, for one reason or another left without commanders, as well as concrete workers, reinforcement workers, excavators, bricklayers, with some there were wives and children, and everyone was waiting for what he would do - commandant, general, big boss. And Puzyrev made the only correct decision in that situation - to withdraw all these people from the blow, to bring them to a place where the defense can be restarted, where you and everyone will be given clear and precise orders.
General Puzyrev lined up the confused crowd into a marching column and led them to join the main forces. He did not run away, as someone under the nickname "Shwonder" claims, but led the column not to the east, but to the north-west, to his own people, through Belovezhskaya Pushcha. And he brought everyone who joined him.
And he entered the order of the front headquarters. By order of Army General Zhukov, he was appointed commandant of the Spass-Demensky fortified area. Such is the "pillbox on wheels." In November 1941, General Puzyrev died suddenly. As his subordinate military engineer of the 3rd rank P. Paliy noted, "the general swallowed some pills all the way." At the age of 52, Mikhail Ivanovich Puzyrev, who went through the crucible of more than one war, was a core. And it didn't take a German bullet to stop his heart. Enough of the murderous stresses of that fateful time …
Yes, his soldiers fought in pillboxes to the last. The BUR, though half-hearted, held the defense in a third of its strength. They fought without command, because it is impossible to command without communication. Yes, from the outside it looked unsightly: the troops are fighting, and the general is leaving in an unknown direction for them. Perhaps it was this situation that tormented the soul and heart of Puzyrev. But the war put people in even different situations … Nobody knows where General Puzyrev is buried.
The bunkers of the Brest fortified area … They only at first sheltered their defenders from the first bullets and shells. Then, when they fell into the correct siege, they turned into deadly traps, into mass graves. There are no bouquets of flowers, no eternal fire here, near Semyatichi. Only eternal memory, frozen in the military cut-out reinforced concrete.
