The first time the bomb did not reach Nadezhda Baidachenko in June 1941
On that day (Either June 22, or June 23, since Nadezhda Baidachenko clearly remembers that on the 24th, along with other students, she left to help the villagers in harvesting, from where they were later sent to dig trenches. She returned to Stalino only in the first days October), they sat together with a fellow student on the Stalino Fire Square (it is still called that in Donetsk today, although since 1927 it officially bears the name of Dzerzhinsky). It was so serene and peaceful around … A plane circled high above the city. They spoke, however, about the war - that it would not last long, which means that there was no point in going to officer courses, as they were offered at the military registration and enlistment office. Better to go straight to the front. "… And it is completely wrong that girls are taken only with medical training!" - Nadya jumped up in her hearts, remembering the conversation with the military commissar: even such an argument as her badge "Voroshilovsky shooter" did not work on him.
… Students have already entered the First Line - the main street of the city (officially since 1928 - Artem), when an explosion thundered behind. Only then did the air raid siren howl. They ran - but not into the bomb shelter, but turning back to the Fire Station. There are no chips left from the shop where they were sitting a few minutes ago. A funnel smoked in its place. The first bomb (Apparently, this was the case that they write about “on the first day of hostilities, a bomber broke through to Stalino, but anti-aircraft guns fought back.” Subsequently, the Nazis bombed the city twice more: they wanted to seize numerous enterprises in working order, that they failed (www.infodon.org.ua/stalino/191)), dropped on Stalino, it seems, was aimed at Nadezhda. And only a little late. In the future, this happened more than once …
What's the worst thing about a front-line anti-aircraft battery? Plaque. This is when enemy planes arrive specifically in order to destroy anti-aircraft guns, which do not allow bombing our troops with impunity. This is not like the bombing in the rear, where the pilots are in a hurry to drop their deadly cargo onto the object and turn back. They hit the battery in waves. One wave after another, over and over again … It can last an hour, or even more.
In other parts, you can hide from bombs - in dugouts, cracks, but at least in a trench - and it will protect you from shrapnel. And the anti-aircraft gunners cannot hide - they must repel the raid. What is the protection against land mines and fragmentation bombs, aimed at the battery? Only a helmet and an earthen parapet around the anti-aircraft gun - low, so as not to interfere with the rotation of the gun.
The ground groans from close continuous breaks. Acrid smoke obscures the battery position. And the girls, ignoring the hail of shrieking debris, fire furiously at the planes. This is also the best defense: the dense anti-aircraft gun fire prevents the enemy from bombing the guns aimingly. Not all of the "hijackers" returned to base. But the battery also suffered heavy losses. How many friends had to be buried …
The battalion commander's voice is chronically hoarse - it breaks every time during the battle. You have to yell at the top of your lungs for the command to be heard. From the shooting of heavy guns, the girls are deaf, blood flows from their ears. So it is impossible to understand - is it a shrapnel wound? Then, after the battle, they will figure it out.
And the raid will end - and it happened that the anti-aircraft gunners would start laughing. So they relieve nervous tension - after all, death passed very close, but still - by. Kombat thinks such a reaction is strange, but he has long ago given up trying to comprehend female psychology. The peasants - after the battle, they took out a makhorka, rolled a cigarette, greedily inhaled; it is, of course, much clearer.
The girls also did not miss the opportunity to hurt, remembering the "curious" episodes of the battle. Especially hit the few men who ended up in the women's unit. In the heat of battle, Corporal Sobakin dropped the shell on the frame of the anti-aircraft guns - then everyone who saw it froze for a moment. But when it is already behind - as you remember, laughter makes out. Always all the bumps fell on that Sobakin. Burnt into the memory of his surname for life. But what was the name of an elderly gun-maker from a Jewish town in Ukraine - it was completely forgotten. The girls often laughed at him, too - after all, they remained under fire, and he was hiding in the dugout with the beginning of the raid. But as soon as the red-hot cannon jammed and a loud shout of the battalion commander was heard: "Masters!" - he is already right there, running with his instrument to the silenced anti-aircraft gun. He knows his business and soon, having eliminated the malfunction, just as quickly returns to the shelter.
What's the hardest thing about an anti-aircraft battery? Shells. Most often they are brought up at night - about two dozen trucks. Everyone is getting ready to unload. The girls, straining themselves, drag heavy boxes, fearing to let the load out of their numb hands. Finally they were transferred to the warehouse - but even here there is no time for respite. Now you need to open each one, remove the shells, wipe off the factory grease and put it back in place. And my hands ache and tremble after unloading, it's scary to take a slippery projectile. Finally, we were done with that.
It remains to bring some of the ammunition to the anti-aircraft guns. It's dawn already. The Germans are flying - it is necessary to open barrage. It happened that during the day they shot everything that was unloaded during the night. And again, with the onset of darkness, ammunition will be delivered. Hundreds of boxes of incredible weight. But these are girls. They still have to give birth - those who survive.
I cried a return to the battery
However, Nadezhda got an opportunity to get rid of the deadly hell of raids and the exhausting soldier labor of an artilleryman. And this is due to her literary talent.
Affected, probably, the paternal genes and the influence of Donetsk writers. Father - Fedor Baidachenko - was a multifaceted gifted person. In his youth, working as a turner, he was also famous at the plant as a self-taught artist. The team gave him a proletarian direction to study and raised money for a trip to Moscow. And this was during the years of the civil war! True, Fyodor Ivanovich never became a professional artist. Time required something different - to fight and build.
He was the secretary of the district committee, was in charge of the "culture" of the region, wrote stories and even headed the Union of Donbass Writers. He was friends with Vladimir Sosyura, Peter Chebalin, Pavel Merciless, Boris Gorbatov, Pavel Baidebura. The writers loved to gather at the hospitable Baidachenko's homes, discuss books, argue. It is not surprising that Nadezhda chose the Faculty of Philology. And she impressed the teachers so much with the knowledge of literature that she was offered to stay at the department even before graduation. But the war decided its fate in its own way.
At the front, Nadya repeatedly wrote about anti-aircraft gunners in an army newspaper. And then suddenly an order came: to send private NF Baydachenko at the disposal of the editorial board. But not for the same did she rush to the front in order to "sit back" in relative safety, when her friends risk their lives every day! No matter how hard the editor tried to convince the girl that she would be more useful here, it was in vain. After a few days he gave up. As Nadezhda Fyodorovna later explained: "I cried out the return to the battery." And there the battalion commander met with abuse: “You fool! I would have stayed alive! And I would have received an officer's rank! " He became coarse in the war, but worried about his girls, who had no right to hide from bombs.
Despite all the dangers, the bomb never reached Nadezhda. And by the end of the war there were no more raids on the battery. The last time it whistled at the temple (touching the ear) in May 1945 on the street of a German town. Yes, not a splinter, not a bullet … but a lighter. And again - no, not an incendiary bomb. Just a massive gasoline lighter. Some unfinished fascist threw her from above from the window of the building, aiming at the head. But he also missed. You will not wait!
This year Nadezhda Fyodorovna will celebrate her 95th birthday. And she kept that lighter. And she gave her grandson, along with a cigarette case, which is made of a piece of metal from the body of a German plane, shot down by their anti-aircraft battery.
Soloist from "lip"
Girls and at the front remained girls. They loved to chat, sang in chorus or singly. By some miracle, they managed to get perfume and powder. Everyone wanted to be beautiful, and taking care of their appearance was far from last. When a mole suddenly appeared on Nadia's face and began to grow, without thinking twice, she cut it off with a razor. The blood could not stop for several hours. The battalion commander threatened to bring him to court for self-mutilation.
The case, of course, did not reach the tribunal. But I had a chance to sit in the guardhouse. True, for a completely different reason. On her friend's birthday, Nadezhda changed the soldier's underwear for moonshine in a nearby village. Returning, I ran into the battalion commander … Under the "lip" they adapted a hole in the position of the battery. It was only allowed to get out of there to shoot at planes (there were no guards).
And then suddenly Rokossovsky himself came to the battery. They say he liked to unexpectedly descend into the lower divisions, try porridge from a soldier's cauldron, and talk to the rank and file. Since the composition is girlish, I asked: do the girls sing? Or not before in the war? And what songs are without Hope. They rushed after her - flatly refuses to get out of the pit. The battalion commander appeared, ordered the authorities to go and sing: "Then you will finish your time."
She came out as she was, straightening - the belt of the guardhouse was not put. She sang her favorite Ukrainian songs, sang solo in the girls' choir - they also sang "The Song of Revenge", which was written especially for the battery by Pavel Merciless (the one who owns the famous lines "Donbass has never been brought to its knees, and no one has been given the opportunity to play!" poems "Donbass live! (Oath)" (1942))). Nadya, in a letter from the front, asked him to compose a march song for them - "girls of anti-aircraft gunners". “… At least a few lines. It will be our own battery battle song - our salute. " The poet responded and sent poetry.
Rokossovsky liked the concert. And Nadezhda did not have to "sit out". Inquiring why the soloist was dressed out of shape - without a belt - and finding out what her fault was, the general cheered up and canceled the punishment. He offered to go to the front-line ensemble, but did not insist when she refused.
And soldier's tales are not fairy tales, and talent is a fact
… I re-read what I had written and became thoughtful. Firstly, it is somehow frivolous about the war. Completely soldier's tales. And I didn’t mention the damaged American plane: at the very beginning of the shuttle flights it was mistaken for a new German bomber … Also, they will say, a bike.
But stories are not fairy tales, not fictions. Everything is authentic in these stories. I heard them repeatedly not only from Nadezhda Baidachenko, but also from her front-line friends. Previously, they met from time to time (now, it seems, no one is left alive, except for Nadezhda Fyodorovna). I sat next to them, listened to their memories, wrote them down. And the fact that the former anti-aircraft gunners did not like to talk about the horrors of the raids, about how their friends died nearby, is probably natural. They preferred to remember the light that brightened up the difficult, terrible everyday life of the war. Which, as you know, is not a woman's face.
Secondly, they might think that I am idealizing Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Like, for that she has remarkable abilities, and for this … But what to do, if it is. Before entering the philological faculty, they predicted an acting career for her. His passion for theater began in childhood. Having got to the show of a visiting den for the first time, the next day she pleased the surrounding children by playing the show she had seen in the courtyard - with homemade dolls sewn from scraps. Then she herself composed stories and texts on the topic of the day. It was in those days when the pioneers sang: "Ah, rank-rank-rank, a brick fell, killed Chamberlain, Chiang Kai-shek wept" (The original text of the ditty was somewhat different. Pyotr Grigorenko in his memoirs (Only rats can be found underground … - New York: Publishing House "Detinets", 1981) recalls how in the late 1920s "they were bawling, although senseless, but very uplifting:" Oh, rank-rank-rank - a brick fell, killed Zhang Zuo Ling, Chiang Kai Shi burst into tears.”This verse was dedicated to the successful operation (which was long attributed to Japanese intelligence, and now to Soviet intelligence) to eliminate the ruler of Manchuria, Zhang Zuolin, who died in a train explosion on June 4, 1928).
Later, Nadya received the real props for the puppet theater as a gift from Pavel Postyshev, when she went to Kharkov to the rally of the winners of the all-Ukrainian competition of pioneer teams in collecting spikelets. When harvesting grain (mowed not by harvesters, but by primitive "loafers") on the fields socialized as a result of collectivization, collective farmers, following the mowers, gathered only ears on a long stalk in sheaves. A zealous owner in the past, it is true, would not have left a grain on the ground, but here the stubble was strewn with spikelets everywhere. They did not know that hunger was impending, even if they would have collected for themselves (this happened even before the notorious "law of three ears"). Then there was a movement supported by the authorities to collect spikelets. A lot of grain was saved by the pioneers of Ukraine, and in the Bakhmut district the brigade of Nadia Baidachenko gathered the most.
However, we digress from the topic … When a theater with his troupe opened in Stalino, the father got his daughter a countermark. She did not miss a single performance, made friends with many actors. And what I saw on stage, I tried to repeat at school. She organized a theater group, where she was both a director and an actress. Both Schiller and Nadezhda's favorite operettas played. And then they staged performances based on Ukrainian classics. There was a period of Ukrainization in the republic at that time, when practically all Russian schools were translated into the Ukrainian language of instruction. Russian-speaking Nadezhda was carried away by Ukrainian songs. Moreover, the voice, as everyone assured, was beautiful. She played the piano well, danced well.
Passion for the theater also manifested itself in the army. In 1945, when the war had already ended, and they were not yet allowed to go home, Baydachenko organized a soldier's theater. Both Russian and Ukrainian plays were played.
It is clear that both at home in the pre-war years, and at the battery, no one doubted that she would become an actress.
45th year. Now you can organize a soldier's theater. First on the left - Nadya // FROM THE FAMILY ARCHIVE OF BAIDACHENKYU
But after the war, there was no question of continuing his studies at the philological faculty, or of the theater. His father had not yet demobilized, and in the arms of Nadezhda, his younger brother Vadim, a participant in the battles for Stalingrad, was dying of front-line wounds. I went to work - first at the regional library, then as an editor at a book and newspaper publishing house. Of course, she could not resist organizing amateur performances. Suddenly, their team was recognized as the best in the city.
And then her passion for art almost changed her life. They were offered to work as the director of the regional Palace of Culture in Ivano-Frankivsk region. Already getting ready for the journey, a directive came from the Central Committee to revive amateur performances. It was ordered to organize it in all large teams, submit reports, and participate in competitions. The work of the regional committee will now be assessed according to the achievements in this direction.
Local authorities grabbed their heads. Who will do this? Whom should we send to contests so as not to hit the face in the mud?.. No, we won't let you go anywhere. The best amateur collective of the city cannot be lost! Urgently appoint Baidachenko as a senior inspector of amateur performances of the regional cult enlightenment.
Then for a quarter of a century - from 1954 to 1979, Nadezhda Fedorovna worked in the regional party archives.
I keep thinking: what if she had left for Galicia, how would fate have been? They sent there another girl from Stalino, and soon the news came: Bandera's supporters killed her …
Knowing the character of Nadezhda, I am sure that, having assessed the situation there, she would have postponed amateur performances for the time being and started organizing the defense - she would have become a "hawk", as the local OUN fighters against terror were called at that time. Moreover, there was an example that everyone in the family knows about. My aunt - my father's sister - during the civil war was the head of the district militia and on horseback, with a revolver and a saber, chased the gangs in the Izium region. I don't know if a similar case is known on the territory of Ukraine, for a woman to occupy a similar position then?..
That was such a family - Baidachenko. Our land gave birth to such people.
* "To laugh, to finish your studies, to love" - Lines from "Song of revenge" on the verses of Pavel the Merciless, which became the anthem of the anti-aircraft battalion, where the heroine of this essay served. Under the title of the poem, the poet indicated: "Dedicated to Nadia Baydachenko."
