Not so long ago I read the material of Polina Efimova "It was a sacred, high feeling of love and compassion", and it very interestingly described the work of nurses on military medical trains. And then I remembered - b-a-a, - but after all, my grandmother told me in childhood and in great detail about how she worked in the brigade of sandwiches, who received such trains at the station of Penza - I station, but she didn't give me anything. she talked neither about patriotism, nor about high feelings, nor about flights of a female crew, nor about burning hearts. Surprisingly, then, in Soviet times, she did not even utter any such pretentious words. Well, I didn’t hear them. But about how it was, and what she really felt then, she told me more than once. And her childhood memory is good, and then, too, I never complained about her.
In the carriage of an ambulance train.
I must say that the fate of my grandmother Evdokia Petrovna Taratynova was still the same: she was born in the family of … a forester under one … Penza count, and her mother was the senior housekeeper in their family. Well, the forester was responsible for all the forest lands and so that the men from the surrounding villages would not steal forests. Her mother had all the cooking and all the supplies, because both the old and the young countess did not burden themselves with chores in the kitchen: "I want, my dear, chicken, as you do, or chicken Kiev …" - and that's all about what there was talk between them. But her daughter, that is, my grandmother, was made a companion to the count's granddaughter, and together they studied with home teachers, and at the piano, and sew, and knit. “Why should the count's granddaughter learn to sew? I asked, "What's the point in that?" “Everyone studied,” my grandmother answered me. All together in the room sat and embroidered or sewed. So it was accepted."
Now these cars have turned into museums.
However, I was not interested in sewing. It was more interesting to hear about how for the winter the count's family moved from their country estate to the city, and the grandmother, along with the count's granddaughter, went to the gymnasium together. But most of all I was surprised by their "count habits". So, every morning from the estate to the city, in any weather, a courier with freshly made butter (molded into molds with a convex cow), a can of milk and a jar of sour cream went to town. Meanwhile, the senior housekeeper herself baked hot buns with cream for the whole family, to which they served sour cream, cream, butter and milk "straight from the horse."
And there were such wagons.
But then the revolution began and “that was the end of it,” but what and how it ended, I never found out. But it was obvious that grandmother had married grandfather and they began to live well, and make good money. A large carpet of her dowry was sold during the famine of 1921, but in general, due to the fact that he worked as a food officer, the famine was survived without any special losses. In 1940, my grandfather graduated from the Ulyanovsk Teachers' Institute (before that he had a diploma, but from the tsarist time) and in 1941 he joined the party and was immediately appointed head of the city department of public education. All this time, my grandmother worked as a librarian in the school library, which is why later, when she retired, she only had 28 rubles. True, the grandfather received a pension of republican significance, as a labor veteran and an order bearer, at 95 rubles, so that in general they had enough to live on in old age.
Well, when the war began and they almost immediately lost both sons, they decided that she needed to go to work in the Sandruzhina, because they give a good ration there, mom) is already big. So, on mature family thinking, my grandmother went to the station to receive trains with the wounded. Interestingly, their family lived at that time … with a servant! One woman came to clean the house, and the other washed their clothes. And all for a fee, that is, they had the opportunity to pay them! But on the other hand, at home, as my mother already recalled, they practically never visited together: my grandmother would come, bring rations, cook cabbage soup and again to the station.
And here evacuees came in large numbers to Penza, well, just darkness. One of my colleagues even defended his Ph. D. thesis on the topic "Party leadership of the evacuated population during the Great Patriotic War on the example of the Penza, Ulyanovsk and Kuibyshev regions." And since I could read it, I learned that the evacuation was extremely complex and multifaceted, that cattle (self-propelled), educational institutions were evacuated, well, but about factories and factories, and so everyone knows. Even prisoners (!) And those were evacuated and placed in local prisons, that's how. That is, not only a single gram of fuel was not left to the enemy, but they were also deprived of potential accomplices, which is why the Penza prison castle was simply overcrowded with prisoners. Well, in schools classes were held in four (!) Shifts, so the load on teachers was oh-oh, and my grandfather had to solve many problems and act as efficiently as possible. And he acted, otherwise he would not have received the Order of Lenin.
Internal view of one of the cars of the III class with 16 seats.
Well, with my grandmother it was like this: first she graduated from the courses of medical instructors, and since she was then already 40 years old, she was appointed the eldest in the brigade of girls 17-18 years old. The task was this: as soon as an ambulance train arrived at the station, immediately run to it with a stretcher and unload the wounded. Then take them to the emergency room for initial processing. There, other girls were taken to work, who washed the wounded, bandaged, changed clothes and sent them to hospitals. However, the most primary sorting was carried out even during unloading. The nurses from the train with each wounded gave a "medical history", or even verbally conveyed: "This gangrene of both legs, the third degree. Immediately under the knife! " And they were dragged not to the waiting room at the station, but straight to the square, where the ambulances were already standing, and immediately such heavy ones were taken to hospitals.
The signaling was carried out as follows: since the phone was only at the Penza-II station, they called from there and informed how many and what trains were running. Sometimes it was like this: “Girls, you have an hour of rest. There are no trains! - and then everyone was happy that they could have a rest, sat and chatted, but did not leave anywhere. After all, the message about the train could come at any minute. However, much more often ambulance trains signaled their arrival with honks: one long whistle - a train with the wounded was on its way, prepare for unloading. And then everyone stopped drinking tea, if it was winter, then they put on short fur coats and hats, mittens, dismantled the stretcher and went to the platform. Such trains were always accepted on the first track, except for those cases when there were two or three such trains at once. That's when the girls had to run!
But the most frightening thing was when there were frequent beeps from the train. This meant: "A lot of heavy people, we need immediate help!" Then everyone ran to the platform at breakneck speed, regardless of who was a simple nurse and who was the head of the brigade. Everyone had to carry the wounded. A train in the clouds of steam approached the platform, and immediately the doors of the carriages were thrown open and the train medical staff began to hand over the wounded along with accompanying documents. And everyone shouted: “Faster, faster! The second echelon is on its way, and the third is behind it on the stretch! Already on the stretch! We overtook him by a miracle! " This was especially terrible when three such trains came in a row.
It was not only hard to look at the wounded, but very hard. And at the same time, no one experienced any rise in patriotism, as well as special pity for them. There was simply no time for experiencing any high feelings! It was necessary to transfer heavy peasants from one stretcher to another, or to pull them out of the car on a tarpaulin, or to help those who can walk on their own, but walk poorly, and he strives to hang on you with the whole mass. Many people stink unbearably, and even look you will vomit, but you can neither turn away nor "vomit", you need to banally do the work entrusted to you, that is, to save these people. They consoled, without hesitation: "Be patient, dear." And they thought to themselves: "You are so heavy, uncle."
This is how the wounded were lowered from the carriage.
And the doctors from the train crew are also hurrying: “Pay attention - this one has a shrapnel wound in his chest, urgently on the table!”; "Burns 50 percent of the body, but you can still try to save!"; "This one has eye damage - immediately to the clinic!" It was inconvenient to carry the wounded through the station building. I had to run around with a stretcher around him. And there they again load the wounded from them into ambulances and immediately rush back with the stretcher. It was impossible to lose, forget or confuse papers, the life of a person could depend on it. And many of the wounded were unconscious, many were delirious and bore the devil knows what, while others also urged on - "Hurry up, why are you digging!" It's only in the movies that the wounded call out to the nurse: “Sister! Darling!" Usually it was only later, in the hospital. And there, in the frost at the station, no one wanted to lie for an extra five minutes. It's good that the Germans never bombed Penza, and all this had to be done, albeit in the cold, but at least not under bombs!
Then they had to help load the medicine onto the train, and he went back again. And the girls, as my grandmother said, literally fell off their feet from fatigue and ran to the place assigned to them at the station to drink strong, hot tea. This is just what they saved themselves.
In rations from Lend-Lease deliveries, the Sandruzhinnits at the station were given egg powder, stew (for some reason, New Zealand), Indian tea, sugar and blankets. My grandmother got a coat with a kangaroo fur collar, but the same coats were given to many then. It's just that this time someone had a coat, and someone more sugar and stew.
And so day after day. Although there were also days of rest, when the flow of the wounded was redirected to other Volga cities, since all hospitals in Penza were packed to capacity.
This is how the building of the railway station of the Penza-I station was in the 40s of the last century.
So patriotism was then not so much in words as in deeds. And besides, people still remained people: someone tried to "evade", someone "talk", someone was only interested in stew and "imported" blankets. But this is how the forces of the “grieving” and those who were disgusted with all this, but the need forced them to do the job, and a common Victory was forged. It was. That's it, and nothing else! And if need be, today's youth will work the same way. It's just that no one is going anywhere.
