And it so happened that in 1956 in the USSR, at the Kiev Film Studio, a very good (color) war film "The Missing One" was shot, which was released in 1957.
The film starred the then famous film actors Isaac Shmaruk, Mikhail Kuznetsov, Sofya Giatsintova and others. It told how in one of the battles a wounded Soviet officer, whom his own considered missing, actually survived. Using the documents of a dying Czech doctor (well, this is how lucky a person is) who served in the German army, he ends up in a German hospital. Then he runs from there to the Czech partisans, and becomes their authoritative commander. At the end of the film, he blows up an ammunition depot and dies in the process. His Czech comrades and the approaching troops of the Red Army, together with his own commander, honor his memory, but they do not know who he is. So this hero remains nameless!
It is clear that later he was shown both in cinemas and on TV more than once, so I saw him already when I realized what was happening and I really liked that they shoot from parabellum there (just like me!), and they drive the ISU-122, and the IS-2 tanks, in a word, there were heroic deeds and equipment. In general, they knew how to make films in Ukraine at that time, they knew how. But they didn't like this film at home, so I watched it either in the cinema or at the neighbors'. The reason is in my uncle Konstantin Petrovich Taratynov, who also went to war and disappeared without a trace. His portrait, along with portraits of my second uncle Alexander, who also died in the war, and my grandfather, as was customary in many families, hung in frames on the wall above the chest of drawers, on which stood an old Moser clock with a strike and a bunch of trinkets. And in one of his drawers was an old leather briefcase with family documents from 1882.
Konstantin Taratynov is my uncle.
That is, my family lived in the city of Penza on the street. Proletarskaya 29 for a very long time. There were several children in the family, and it was just the son of my grandfather, Konstantin Petrovich Taratynov, who was the eldest, and my mother Margarita Petrovna was the youngest. At first they just told me about it, then they said that he died in the war, and when I got older and, having come from the cinema, began to retell this film, they told the following story …
Like many young people in those years, after completing the seven-year period, Uncle Kostya decided to go to work. He stopped the choice on the railway, since my grandfather just started his working career there, and my great-grandfather was a master of locomotive repair shops and therefore a very respected person. After passing the exam, he began to work at the Penza-1 station in a post-baggage car. He liked to travel around the country, and having visited the Ural Mountains for the first time, he told the younger family members a lot about his impressions after returning home. According to my mother, her brother was very curious, read a lot of magazines, he was especially interested in everything related to weapons. I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, I bought it and a tutorial. But his true passion was aviation. Also, in general, a tribute to the time, the sky at that time attracted very many and very many wanted to be like Chkalov. He enrolled in the Penza flying club, learned to fly, and began flying gliders and training aircraft.
On June 20, 1941, two days before the start of the war, he was drafted into the army. And he was then almost exactly 18 years old. Of course, he wanted to get into aviation, but did not pass the medical examination for vision, as he wore glasses. Nothing boded trouble, relatives saw off their beloved son, the train with conscripts was leaving at 5 am. But they never saw their son again …
June 22, 1941 was a day off, a holiday for railway workers. The entire Taratynov family celebrated him in the park at the club named after. F. E. Dzerzhinsky. Music sounded, everyone walked and laughed. Suddenly everything was silent, everyone rushed to the exit, where a loudspeaker horn hung on a pole. V. M. Molotov. From his words it became clear that at 3 am Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. The parents were shocked, they realized that they were taking their son to the war. In the first letter, which came from Kostya, he said that the train was heading to the West, where at that time there were already fierce battles. In total, four letters came, the last from Novgorod Volynsky, where his train arrived for the third time. After that, a notice was brought to the house that K. P. Taratynov, a soldier of the Red Army. disappeared … In 1942, his mother, my grandmother, saw in the newspaper a photograph taken in a Belarusian partisan detachment. One of the fighters looked very much like his son. She wrote a letter to the author of the article, but he replied that he did not remember all the names of the partisans whom he photographed and advised him to contact the partisan detachment, and told how to find him. But … having contacted the indicated address, grandfather and grandmother found out that the entire detachment had been destroyed. Relatives have been trying for a long time to find the missing son. They made inquiries to the military registration and enlistment offices, but they received answers: "It does not appear in the lists of the killed and wounded." So the life of a young guy ended at 18 …
I keep the old documents and letters in the same briefcase, and at one time I read them in the most careful way - after all, these are real documents of the war, a most valuable historical source. So, I always thought that war letters formed a triangle, and in all films about the war it is shown that way. But Uncle Kostya's letters were all enclosed in envelopes, albeit very small. And one envelope is even with a stamp. What was it? Peacetime inertia, when there were still envelopes, and when they were gone, people switched to triangles? A trifle, of course, but it’s from such trifles that life is made up, history is made.
Here is the first shortest letter. “I am driving along the Penza-Kharkov line. I am writing from the Povorino station. Now they are distributing herring and bread. The train is going very fast. It is difficult to write, full of people. That is, it is obvious that the train car was overcrowded. That is, the newly recruited guys, who did not even hold rifles in their hands, were immediately taken to the front. It would be more logical to send them to Samara, train them there, and then send them to fight. But … then it was so!
Letter No. 2. In the second letter he informed that he was in Kharkov, but, of course, he did not know where they would be taken next.
Letter # 3 dated June 26th stated that Kotya was in the town of Korosten, in Western Ukraine. It is necessary to write in fits and starts, since for the second time German bombers pass over the station and bomb the city. 13 planes arrived. They were taken here from Kharkov for a very long time. They were taken to Lviv, but the unit where they were sent went into battle and where they will be taken next, no one knows. “We are waiting for relocation,” he wrote at the end of the letter.
The last letter No. 4 of June 27th turned out to be the most detailed, apparently he had the opportunity to write. And now it says that their echelon has now again arrived in Novgorod Volynsky, that it was bombed, and before his eyes, our anti-aircraft gunners shot down 5 German aircraft (and they say that we had an ineffective air defense!), One fell outside the city, and another was hit and sat down next to the station not far from their echelon in the field. “They took out of this plane - and here the most interesting, incomprehensible and even incredible begins - a 16 year old drunk pilot, a 17 year old girl, the rest of the adults - he writes - (navigator, radio operator and others)”.
Scan from the letter.
And then: "A lot of spies and saboteurs are being detained at the stations." “Here one military echelon was brought in all mowed down by machine-gun fire. There are very few people left alive, although I myself have not seen it. " “I'm finishing, becausethings that are interesting to watch start to fly again."
This is what my uncle had an unusual military experience! And - how did these strange personalities get into the military plane of the German Air Force and what did they do there? After all, neither a seventeen-year-old girl, nor a sixteen-year-old guy in the German aviation could serve by definition (or could they have served?), But, nevertheless, for some reason they ended up in it and … were immediately taken prisoner! How did he know their age, that the guy was drunk, if he reports it as an irrefutable fact? Most likely their documents were checked, and everyone in the train where Kotya was traveling began to talk about it … And he does not give any more details, that is, everything was clear to him. A godsend for filmmakers, and where? In my home archive!
A letter from the military commander from the newspaper and a photograph in which a guy very similar to Kotyu with a pistol and wearing a cap.
Well, and then they searched for him for a long time and persistently, but they never found him. Perhaps he did not even have time to change into army uniforms (when and where was there to change, if the same "things" later bombed his echelon too?) And so, wearing a cap and got to the partisans. And most likely, just in one surrounded unit, named beauty for the sake of a partisan detachment named after Kotovsky, in which he fought until he died along with everyone else!
Doesn't appear anywhere.
