More than sixty years ago, a terrible tragedy suddenly befell the Russian people. War is destruction, poverty, cruelty, death. War means thousands of people tortured, killed, tortured in camps, millions of crippled destinies.
We are accustomed to the fact that in war there is no place for sentimentality and tenderness, and the word “hero” in our understanding is necessarily a fighter, a soldier, in a word, a man. Everyone knows the names: Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Panfilov and many others, but few people know the names of those girls who went straight from the prom to the war, without whom, perhaps, there would have been no victory.
Few people know that nurses, our peers, pulled wounded soldiers from the battlefield to the whistle of bullets. If for a man the defense of the fatherland is a duty, a sacred duty, then women went to the front voluntarily. They were not accepted because of their young age, but they went anyway. They went and mastered professions that were previously considered only for men: pilot, tanker, anti-aircraft gunner... They went and killed enemies no worse than men. It was difficult for them, but they still went.
A lot of works have been written about the Great Patriotic War, which show without embellishment all the difficulties that people faced during the war, but most of all I was shocked by the story by B. L. Vasilyev “And the dawns here are quiet...”.
Boris Vasiliev is one of those writers who themselves went through the difficult roads of war, who defended their native land with arms in hand. In addition, he wrote many stories about what he had to endure during the difficult years at the front. And this is the experience of an eyewitness, and not the speculation of the creator.
The story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet...” tells us about the distant war years. The action takes place in May 1942. The main character, Fedot Evgrafovich Baskov, at his “own request” receives a female anti-aircraft machine gun battalion at his disposal: “Send in the non-drinkers... Non-drinkers and this... So, you know, about the female sex...”. The girls have a low opinion of their foreman and constantly make fun of him, calling him “a mossy stump.” And indeed, at thirty-two years old, Sergeant Major Basque was “older than himself,” he was a man of few words, but he knew and could do a lot.
All girls are not alike. The assistant sergeant, Sergeant Rita Osyanina, is a strict girl who rarely laughs.
Of the pre-war events, she most clearly remembers the school evening when she met her future husband, Senior Lieutenant Osyanin. He was shy, like herself, they danced together, talked... Rita got married, gave birth to a son, and “there simply couldn’t have been a happier girl.” But then the war began, and this happy fate was not destined to continue. Senior Lieutenant Osyanin died on the second day of the war, in a morning counterattack. Rita learned to hate, quietly and mercilessly, and, deciding to avenge her husband, she went to the front.
The complete opposite of Osyanina is Zhenya Komelkova. The author himself never ceases to admire her: “tall, red-haired, white-skinned. And the children’s eyes: green, round, like saucers.” Zhenya’s family: mother, grandmother, brother - the Germans killed everyone, but she managed to hide.
Yes. She ended up in the women's battery for having an affair with a married commander. Very artistic, emotional, she always attracted male attention. Her friends say about her: “Zhenya, you should go to the theater...”. Despite personal tragedies, Komelkova remained cheerful, mischievous, sociable and sacrificed her life for the sake of others, to save her wounded friend.
Vaskov immediately liked the fighter Lisa Brichkina. Fate did not spare her either: from childhood she had to manage the household herself, since her mother was very ill. She fed the cattle, cleaned the house, and cooked food. She became increasingly alienated from her peers. Lisa began to shy away, keep silent, and avoid noisy companies. One day her father brought a hunter from the city to the house, and she, seeing nothing but her sick mother and the house, fell in love with him, but he did not reciprocate her feelings. When leaving, he left Lisa a note with a promise to place her in a technical school with a dormitory in August... But the war did not allow these dreams to come true! Lisa also dies; she drowns in the swamp, rushing to the aid of her friends.
There are so many girls, so many destinies: everyone is different. But in one thing they are still similar: all destinies were broken and disfigured by the war. Having received an order not to let the Germans get to the railway, the girls carried it out at the cost of their own lives. All five girls who went on the mission died, but they died heroically, for their Motherland.
“And the dawns here are quiet...” is an artistic canvas of significant content, a work of deep civil and patriotic resonance. In 1975, B. Vasiliev was awarded the USSR State Prize for this story.
More than sixty years ago, a terrible tragedy suddenly befell the Russian people. War is destruction, poverty, cruelty, death. War means thousands of people tortured, killed, tortured in camps, millions of crippled destinies. We are accustomed to the fact that in war there is no place for sentimentality and tenderness, and the word “hero” in our understanding is necessarily a fighter, a soldier, in a word, a man. Everyone knows the names: Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Panfilov and many others, but few people know the names of those girls who went straight from the prom to the war, without whom, perhaps, there would have been no victory. Few people know that nurses, our peers, pulled wounded soldiers from the battlefield to the whistle of bullets. If for a man the defense of the fatherland is a duty, a sacred duty, then women went to the front voluntarily. They were not accepted because of their young age, but they went anyway. They went and mastered professions that had previously been considered only for men: pilot, tanker, anti-aircraft gunner... They went and killed enemies no worse than men. It was difficult for them, but they still went. A lot of works have been written about the Great Patriotic War, which show without embellishment all the difficulties that people faced during the war, but most of all I was shocked by the story by B. L. Vasilyev “And the dawns here are quiet...”. Boris Vasiliev is one of those writers who themselves went through the difficult roads of war, who defended their native land with arms in hand. In addition, he wrote many stories about what he had to endure during the difficult years at the front. And this is the experience of an eyewitness, and not the speculation of the creator. The story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet...” tells us about the distant war years. The action takes place in May 1942. The main character, Fedot Evgrafovich Baskov, at his “own request” receives a female anti-aircraft machine gun battalion at his disposal: “Send in the non-drinkers... Non-drinkers and this... So, you know, about the female gender... " The girls have a low opinion of their foreman and constantly make fun of him, calling him “a mossy stump.” And indeed, at thirty-two years old, Sergeant Major Basque was “older than himself,” he was a man of few words, but he knew and could do a lot. All girls are not alike. The assistant sergeant, Sergeant Rita Osyanina, is a strict girl who rarely laughs. Of the pre-war events, she most clearly remembers the school evening when she met her future husband, Senior Lieutenant Osyanin. He was shy, like herself, they danced together, talked... Rita got married, gave birth to a son, and “there simply couldn’t have been a happier girl.” But then the war began, and this happy fate was not destined to continue. Senior Lieutenant Osyanin died on the second day of the war, in a morning counterattack. Rita learned to hate, quietly and mercilessly, and, deciding to avenge her husband, she went to the front. The complete opposite of Osyanina is Zhenya Komelkova. The author himself never ceases to admire her: “tall, red-haired, white-skinned. And the children’s eyes: green, round, like saucers.” Zhenya’s family: mother, grandmother, brother - the Germans killed everyone, but she managed to hide. She ended up in the women's battery for having an affair with a married commander. Very artistic, emotional, she always attracted male attention. Her friends say about her: “Zhenya, you should go to the theater...”. Despite personal tragedies, Komelkova remained cheerful, mischievous, sociable and sacrificed her life for the sake of others, to save her wounded friend. Vaskov immediately liked the fighter Lisa Brichkina. Fate did not spare her either: from childhood she had to manage the household herself, since her mother was very ill. She fed the cattle, cleaned the house, and cooked food. She became increasingly alienated from her peers. Lisa began to shy away, keep silent, and avoid noisy companies. One day her father brought a hunter from the city to the house, and she, seeing nothing but her sick mother and the house, fell in love with him, but he did not reciprocate her feelings. When leaving, he left Lisa a note with a promise to place her in a technical school with a dormitory in August... But the war did not allow these dreams to come true! Lisa also dies; she drowns in the swamp, rushing to the aid of her friends. There are so many girls, so many destinies: everyone is different. But in one thing they are still similar: all destinies were broken and disfigured by the war. Having received an order not to let the Germans get to the railway, the girls carried it out at the cost of their own lives. All five girls who went on the mission died, but they died heroically, for their Motherland. “And the dawns here are quiet...” is an artistic canvas of significant content, a work of deep civil and patriotic resonance. In 1975, B. Vasiliev was awarded the USSR State Prize for this story.
It was May 1942. The Great Patriotic War was in full swing. The 171st crossing, on which “twelve courtyards survived, a fire shed and a squat, long warehouse, built at the beginning of the century from fitted boulders.” The commandant of the patrol was the gloomy foreman Fedot Evgrafych Baskov. “... He graduated from the regimental school with his incomplete four classes and ten years later rose to the rank of senior officer.” “Not long before the Finnish one, he married a nurse from their garrison hospital. I came across a living woman, I wish she could sing, dance, and drink wine. However, she gave birth to a boy. They called Igor - Igor Fedotich Baskov. Then the Finnish war began, Basque left for the front, and when he returned back with two medals, he was shocked for the first time: while he was dying there in the snow, his wife ended up having an affair with the regimental veterinarian and left for the southern regions. Fedot Evgrafych divorced her immediately, demanded the boy through the court and sent him to his mother in the village. And a year later his little boy died, and from then on Basque smiled only three times: at the general who presented him with the order, at the surgeon who pulled out a shrapnel from his shoulder, and at his mistress Marya Nikiforovna for her cleverness.”
There is a war going on. “In the west (on damp nights the heavy roar of artillery could be heard from there), both sides, having dug two meters into the ground, were finally stuck in a positional war; in the east the Germans bombed the canal and the Murmansk road day and night; in the north there was a fierce struggle for sea routes; in the south, besieged Leningrad continued its stubborn struggle.
And here (at junction 171) there was a resort. The silence and idleness made the soldiers thrilled, as if in a steam room, and in twelve courtyards there were still enough young women and widows who knew how to extract moonshine almost from the squeak of a mosquito.
For three days the soldiers slept and looked closely, on the fourth someone’s name day began, and the sticky smell of local pervach no longer evaporated over the crossing. Commandant Vaskov “wrote reports on command. When their number reached a dozen, the authorities gave Vaskov another reprimand and replaced the half-platoon, swollen with joy. For a week after this, the commandant somehow managed on his own, and then everything was repeated at first so accurately that the foreman eventually got around to rewriting the previous reports, changing only the numbers and names in them.”
Vaskov asked that non-drinkers and those who would be indifferent to the female sex be sent. And then one day they sent a platoon of “teetotal” fighters - these were female anti-aircraft gunners. The girls were cocky, and at first Vaskov did not know how to behave with them. Otherwise, “grace came at the departure.”
“At night, the anti-aircraft gunners excitedly fired from all eight barrels at flying German planes, and during the day they did endless laundry - some of their rags were always drying around the fire shed. The sergeant-major considered such decorations inappropriate and briefly informed Sergeant Kiryanov about this:
Unmasks.
“There is an order,” she said without hesitation.
-What order?
-Corresponding. It states that female military personnel are allowed to dry clothes on all fronts.
The commandant remained silent. Damn them, these girls! Just get in touch and they’ll be giggling until the fall...”
The commander of the first section of the platoon was Rita Osyanina. She was a strict, serious girl. She was not even eighteen when she married a border guard. She was very happy. A year after the wedding, a son was born. They named him Albert - Alik. The next year the war began. Just before the war, in May, Rita sent the child to her parents. And so, when the war began, she began to save other people’s children at the outpost. Her husband, senior lieutenant Osyanin, died on the second day of the war. Rita first became a nurse, and six months later she was sent to the regimental anti-aircraft school. The authorities valued Rita, so her request was respected. And the woman asked to be sent “to the area where there was an outpost where her husband died in a fierce bayonet battle.” In the platoon commanded by Rita, a carrier was killed. And instead they sent the beautiful Evgenia Komelkova. All her relatives - mother, sister, brother - were shot by the Germans. Zhenya crossed the front after the death of her loved ones; Fate decreed that the girl had a relationship with the family colonel. When the authorities found out about this, the colonel was punished, and the girl was sent to a platoon of anti-aircraft gunners. Zhenya was immediately loved by the team. And Rita herself became friends with her extremely quickly and easily. Unnoticed, a third friend, Galka Chetvertak, joined them. They became inseparable.
“The news of the transfer from the front line to the site of the anti-aircraft gunners was met with hostility.” Only Rita asked to send her department specifically. Nobody knew why she made this decision. It turned out that nearby was the city where Rita’s mother and son live. The girl visits her relatives at night, she takes them food, what she managed to save or get herself.
One day Rita told Vaskov that there were Germans in the forest. She saw them herself. There were two Germans, they were in camouflage capes and with machine guns.
Vaskov's superiors give orders to catch the Germans.
Baskov figured out that the Germans were heading towards the Kirov Railway.
Baskov himself, Rita, Evgenia, Lisa Brichkina, Sonya Gurvich and Galya Chetvertak went in search of the Germans.
During the journey, Fedot Baskov somehow became close to the girls in a special way. He was still afraid of their jokes, which were sometimes sarcastic. But he began to perceive them as close and dear people. Fate did not spoil the girls. Many had to endure many troubles even before the war.
“Liza Brichkina lived all nineteen years in a sense of tomorrow. Every morning she was burned with an impatient premonition of dazzling happiness, and immediately her mother’s exhausting cough pushed this date with the holiday until the next day. He didn’t kill, he didn’t cross out, he moved it away.” Father often told Lisa that her mother would die soon. She heard these words for five years. Lisa looked after her mother, spoon-fed her, washed her and changed her clothes. The girl herself cooked dinner, cleaned the house, and also performed other household chores. Lisa's father was a forester, so they lived in some isolation from others. Growing up, the girl began to suffer from this. Lisa didn't even finish school because she was forced to quit due to her mother's illness. One day a hunter appeared in the house and asked permission to stay with them. His father allowed him. The hunter was a young man. Lisa fell in love with him. The hunter promised Lisa that he would help her get into a technical school. Soon the mother died. My father became furious and started drinking. When the war began, the girl ended up doing defense work, then she ended up in an anti-aircraft unit. Lisa really liked the Basque foreman.
Sonya Gurvich, a small, fragile girl, comes from Minsk. “On the door of their small house behind Nemiga there hung a copper plaque: “Doctor of Medicine Solomon Aronovich Gurvich.” And although dad was a simple local doctor, and not a doctor of medicine at all, the plaque was not removed, since my grandfather gave it to him and screwed it to the door himself. because his son became an educated physician and the whole city of Minsk should now know about this." Sonya's father went to calls in any weather, day or night. He did not spare himself to help others. Sonya grew up in a close-knit family.
The girl was hardworking and purposeful. She studied at the university and knew German well. Sonya had her first love - a bespectacled neighbor at lectures. He went to the front as a volunteer. Sonya herself “was hit by anti-aircraft gunners by accident. The front was on the defensive, there were enough translators, but no anti-aircraft gunners.”
Galya Chetvertak was a foundling and grew up in an orphanage. Here she was also given a last name - Chetvertak. “Because she was the shortest of all, a quarter smaller.” She was an energetic girl with a wild imagination. She was in her third year at library college when the war began. Galya was not taken to the front because “she did not fit the army standards either in height or age. But Galya, without giving up, stubbornly stormed the military commissar and lied so shamelessly that the lieutenant colonel, stunned from insomnia, was completely confused and, as an exception, sent Galya to the anti-aircraft gunner.
A dream come true is always devoid of romance. The real world turned out to be harsh and cruel and required not a heroic impulse, but strict execution of military regulations. The festive novelty quickly disappeared, and everyday life was not at all like Galina’s idea of the front. Galya was confused, sour and secretly cried at night. But then Zhenya appeared, and the world started spinning quickly and joyfully again.
But Galya simply could not help but lie. Actually, it was not a lie, but desires presented as reality. And a mother was born - a medical worker, in whose existence Galya herself almost believed..."
So, the Basque foreman and the girls walk through the swamps. The road itself is not easy. And it is especially difficult for girls. Even though they became fighters, they did not stop being weak and gentle. The foreman knows the way well; he leads the girls along a path in the middle of a swamp. The group reached the lake. Here Basque and the girls hid.
The next morning the Germans appeared. There were no longer two of them, but much more. A few hours later, the Germans were about to reach the group consisting of Baskov and the girls.
Baskov sent Lisa Brichkina to report everything that happened at the crossing. The girl went to carry out the order. But when the girl was walking through the swamp, she stumbled and fell into a quagmire. There was no one to help her, Lisa drowned.
The group does not know about Lisa's death. The Basques and the girls wait patiently for reinforcements to arrive. For now, they decided to carry out deceptive maneuvers - to pretend to be lumberjacks. They want the Germans to think there are a lot of people here. The girls and Basques scream loudly, the foreman cuts down trees.
The Germans thought that there was someone in the forest. They do not dare to go and retreat to the lake. The group moved to a new location. But in the same place, Basque lost his pouch.
Sonya Gurvich decided to bring it. But she came across two Germans. The girl died. Then Zhenya and the foreman themselves killed these Germans and avenged Gurvich. Sonya was buried.
And then a group of fighters sees that the Germans are approaching them. The enemy is already close. The girls and the Basques hide behind rocks and bushes and start shooting. The Germans got scared and retreated.
Galya Chetvertak is depressed and scared. Sonya's death made a huge impression on her. The girl was confused, Rita and Zhenya began to reproach her for cowardice. The foreman is trying to protect Galya from attacks. He understands that it is very difficult for the girl. Basque decides to take Galya into reconnaissance for educational purposes. However, it so happened that Galya unwittingly gave herself away. Her condition was to blame. The Germans killed Galya.
The Basque foreman decided to lead the Germans away from the surviving Rita and Zhenya. He was wounded in the arm, but despite this, he had enough strength to escape. The foreman reached the island in the swamp. Here, in the swamp, he noticed Lisa’s clothes. The Basques realized that reinforcements would not come.
Fedot Evgrafych found the Germans. He killed one, then went in search of Rita and Zhenya. Together they are ready to fight. When the Germans appeared, the battle began. The forces were unequal. However, the girls and the Basques still killed several fascists.
Rita is seriously injured. Basque pulled her to safety. While he was away, Zhenya was killed. Rita understands that she will die. She asked the foreman to take care of her child, because Rita’s mother was seriously ill and would not live long, and her father was missing. The Basque foreman promised the girl that he would take care of her son. Baskov told Rita that he would go, reconnoiter the situation and return. When Fedot Evgrafych left, the girl shot herself in the temple.
The Basque foreman was left alone. He buried the girls. Fedot Evgrafych found a hut where the Germans were hiding. They slept. The Basques killed one immediately and took the rest prisoner. The Germans did not believe that the Russian fighter was alone, he was so fearless. “And they tied each other with belts, carefully tied them up, and Fedot Evgrafych personally tied up the last one and began to cry. Tears flowed down his dirty, unshaven face, he shook with chills, and laughed through these tears, and shouted:
- What, they took it?.. They took it, right?.. Five girls, there were five girls in total, only five!.. But you didn’t get through, you didn’t get through anywhere and you’ll die here, you’ll all die!.. I’ll personally kill everyone, personally, even if the authorities have mercy! And then let them judge me! Let them judge!..
And his hand ached so, so ached that everything in him was burning and his thoughts were confused. And therefore he was especially afraid of losing consciousness and clung to it with all his might...
He could never remember that last journey. The German backs swayed in front, dangling from side to side, because Baskov was staggering as if he were drunk. And he saw nothing except these four backs, and he only thought about one thing: to have time to shoot if he lost consciousness. And it hung on the last cobweb, and such pain burned throughout his whole body that he growled from the pain. He growled and cried: he was apparently completely exhausted.
And only then did he allow his consciousness to break off, when they called out to them and when he realized that his own people were coming towards them. Russians..."
Many years later. War is over. In the place where the 171st crossing was located there was paradise nature. This is a wonderful place; many people come here on vacation. The dawns are surprisingly quiet here, everyone pays attention to this. And few people remember that they fought here.
One day, people vacationing here saw that “some old man, gray-haired, stocky, missing an arm, arrived by motorboat, and with him a rocket captain. The captain is called Albert Fedotich” (it becomes clear that the foreman adopted Rita’s son).
Albert Fedotich and Baskov brought a marble slab to place on the grave. People vacationing here understood the solemnity of the moment. Therefore, one of them wrote to his friend: “I wanted to help them carry the stove, but I didn’t dare.”
Composition
More than sixty years ago, a terrible tragedy suddenly befell the Russian people. War is destruction, poverty, cruelty, death. War means thousands of people tortured, killed, tortured in camps, millions of crippled destinies.
We are accustomed to the fact that in war there is no place for sentimentality and tenderness, and the word “hero” in our understanding is necessarily a fighter, a soldier, in a word, a man. Everyone knows the names: Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Panfilov and many others, but few people know the names of those girls who went straight from the prom to the war, without whom, perhaps, there would have been no victory.
Few people know that nurses, our peers, pulled wounded soldiers from the battlefield to the whistle of bullets. If for a man the defense of the fatherland is a duty, a sacred duty, then women went to the front voluntarily. They were not accepted because of their young age, but they went anyway. They went and mastered professions that had previously been considered only for men: pilot, tanker, anti-aircraft gunner... They went and killed enemies no worse than men. It was difficult for them, but they still went.
A lot of works have been written about the Great Patriotic War, which show without embellishment all the difficulties that people faced during the war, but most of all I was shocked by the story by B. L. Vasilyev “And the dawns here are quiet...”.
Boris Vasiliev is one of those writers who themselves went through the difficult roads of war, who defended their native land with arms in hand. In addition, he wrote many stories about what he had to endure during the difficult years at the front. And this is the experience of an eyewitness, and not the speculation of the creator.
The story “The Dawns Here Are Quiet...” tells us about the distant war years. The action takes place in May 1942. The main character, Fedot Evgrafovich Baskov, at his “own request” receives a female anti-aircraft machine gun battalion at his disposal: “Send in the non-drinkers... Non-drinkers and this... So, you know, about the female gender... " The girls have a low opinion of their foreman and constantly make fun of him, calling him “a mossy stump.” And indeed, at thirty-two years old, Sergeant Major Basque was “older than himself,” he was a man of few words, but he knew and could do a lot.
All girls are not alike. The assistant sergeant, Sergeant Rita Osyanina, is a strict girl who rarely laughs.
Of the pre-war events, she most clearly remembers the school evening when she met her future husband, Senior Lieutenant Osyanin. He was shy, like herself, they danced together, talked... Rita got married, gave birth to a son, and “there simply couldn’t have been a happier girl.” But then the war began, and this happy fate was not destined to continue. Senior Lieutenant Osyanin died on the second day of the war, in a morning counterattack. Rita learned to hate, quietly and mercilessly, and, deciding to avenge her husband, she went to the front.
The complete opposite of Osyanina is Zhenya Komelkova. The author himself never ceases to admire her: “tall, red-haired, white-skinned. And the children’s eyes: green, round, like saucers.” Zhenya’s family: mother, grandmother, brother - the Germans killed everyone, but she managed to hide. She ended up in the women's battery for having an affair with a married commander. Very artistic, emotional, she always attracted male attention. Her friends say about her: “Zhenya, you should go to the theater...”. Despite personal tragedies, Komelkova remained cheerful, mischievous, sociable and sacrificed her life for the sake of others, to save her wounded friend.
Vaskov immediately liked the fighter Lisa Brichkina. Fate did not spare her either: from childhood she had to manage the household herself, since her mother was very ill. She fed the cattle, cleaned the house, and cooked food. She became increasingly alienated from her peers. Lisa began to shy away, keep silent, and avoid noisy companies. One day her father brought a hunter from the city to the house, and she, seeing nothing but her sick mother and the house, fell in love with him, but he did not reciprocate her feelings. When leaving, he left Lisa a note with a promise to place her in a technical school with a dormitory in August... But the war did not allow these dreams to come true! Lisa also dies; she drowns in the swamp, rushing to the aid of her friends.
There are so many girls, so many destinies: everyone is different. But in one thing they are still similar: all destinies were broken and disfigured by the war. Having received an order not to let the Germans get to the railway, the girls carried it out at the cost of their own lives. All five girls who went on the mission died, but they died heroically, for their Motherland.
“And the dawns here are quiet...” is an artistic canvas of significant content, a work of deep civil and patriotic resonance. In 1975, B. Vasiliev was awarded the USSR State Prize for this story.
May 1942 Countryside in Russia. There is a war with Nazi Germany. The 171st railway siding is commanded by foreman Fedot Evgrafych Vaskov. He is thirty-two years old. He has only four years of education. Vaskov was married, but his wife ran away with the regimental veterinarian, and his son soon died.
It's calm at the crossing. The soldiers arrive here, look around, and then start “drinking and partying.” Vaskov persistently writes reports, and, in the end, they send him a platoon of “teetotal” fighters - girl anti-aircraft gunners. At first, the girls laugh at Vaskov, but he doesn’t know how to deal with them. The commander of the first section of the platoon is Rita Osyanina. Rita's husband died on the second day of the war. She sent her son Albert to his parents. Soon Rita ended up in the regimental anti-aircraft school. With the death of her husband, she learned to hate the Germans “quietly and mercilessly” and was harsh with the girls in her unit.
The Germans kill the carrier and instead send Zhenya Komelkova, a slender red-haired beauty. A year ago, before Zhenya’s eyes, the Germans shot her loved ones. After their death, Zhenya crossed the front. He picked her up, protected her, “and not just took advantage of her defenselessness - Colonel Luzhin stuck her to himself.” He was a family man, and the military authorities, having found out about this, “recruited” the colonel, and sent Zhenya “to a good team.” Despite everything, Zhenya is “outgoing and mischievous.” Her fate immediately “crosses out Rita’s exclusivity.” Zhenya and Rita get together, and the latter “thaws out”.
When it comes to transferring from the front line to the patrol, Rita is inspired and asks to send her squad. The crossing is located not far from the city where her mother and son live. At night, Rita secretly runs into the city, carrying groceries for her family. One day, returning at dawn, Rita sees two Germans in the forest. She wakes up Vaskov. He receives orders from his superiors to “catch” the Germans. Vaskov calculates that the Germans’ route lies on the Kirov Railway. The foreman decides to take a shortcut through the swamps to the Sinyukhina ridge, stretching between two lakes, along which is the only way to get to the railway, and wait for the Germans there - they will probably take a roundabout route. Vaskov takes Rita, Zhenya, Lisa Brichkina, Sonya Gurvich and Galya Chetvertak with him.
Lisa is from the Bryansk region, she is the daughter of a forester. For five years I cared for my terminally ill mother, but because of this I was unable to finish school. A visiting hunter, who awakened Lisa’s first love, promised to help her enter a technical school. But the war began, Lisa ended up in an anti-aircraft unit. Lisa likes Sergeant Major Vaskov.
Sonya Gurvich from Minsk. Her father was a local doctor, they had a large and friendly family. She herself studied for a year at Moscow University and knows German. A neighbor at lectures, Sonya’s first love, with whom they spent only one unforgettable evening in a cultural park, volunteered for the front.
Galya Chetvertak grew up in an orphanage. There she was “overtaken” by her first love. After the orphanage, Galya ended up in a library technical school. The war found her in her third year.
The path to Lake Vop lies through the swamps. Vaskov leads the girls along a path well known to him, on both sides of which there is a quagmire. The soldiers safely reach the lake and, hiding on the Sinyukhina Ridge, wait for the Germans. They appear on the lake shore only the next morning. It turns out there are not two of them, but sixteen. While the Germans have about three hours left to reach Vaskov and the girls, the foreman sends Lisa Brichkina back to the patrol to report on the change in the situation. But Lisa, crossing the swamp, stumbles and drowns. Nobody knows about this, and everyone is waiting for help. Until then, the girls decide to mislead the Germans. They pretend to be lumberjacks, shout loudly, Vaskov cuts down trees.
The Germans retreat to Lake Legontov, not daring to walk along the Sinyukhin ridge, on which, as they think, someone is cutting down the forest. Vaskov and the girls are moving to a new place. He left his pouch in the same place, and Sonya Gurvich volunteers to bring it. While in a hurry, she stumbles upon two Germans who kill her. Vaskov and Zhenya kill these Germans. Sonya is buried.
Soon the soldiers see the rest of the Germans approaching them. Hiding behind bushes and boulders, they shoot first; the Germans retreat, fearing an invisible enemy. Zhenya and Rita accuse Galya of cowardice, but Vaskov defends her and takes her with him on reconnaissance missions for “educational purposes.” But Vaskov does not suspect what mark Sonin’s death left on Gali’s soul. She is terrified and at the most crucial moment gives herself away, and the Germans kill her.
Fedot Evgrafych takes on the Germans to lead them away from Zhenya and Rita. He is wounded in the arm. But he manages to escape and reach an island in the swamp. In the water, he notices Lisa's skirt and realizes that help will not come. Vaskov finds the place where the Germans stopped to rest, kills one of them and goes to look for the girls. They are preparing to make their final battle. The Germans appear. In an unequal battle, Vaskov and the girls kill several Germans. Rita is mortally wounded, and while Vaskov drags her to a safe place, the Germans kill Zhenya. Rita asks Vaskov to take care of her son and shoots herself in the temple. Vaskov buries Zhenya and Rita. After this, he goes to the forest hut where the five surviving Germans are sleeping. Vaskov kills one of them on the spot, and takes four prisoner. They themselves tie each other with belts, because they do not believe that Vaskov is “alone for many miles.” He loses consciousness from pain only when his own Russians are already coming towards him. Many years later, a gray-haired, stocky old man without an arm and a rocket captain, whose name is Albert Fedotich, will bring a marble slab to Rita’s grave.
