15 years after the war, he found the girl of dead fellow countryman....

timthumbwt The war doesn't end in a full point at the end of a history textbook. Continuation of loneliness stretches behind them a long train. But suddenly (this magic "suddenly" is a favorite word of Dostoevsky and Fate) impossible things happen. At a much unexpected time, under the most incredible circumstances the fragments of broken mirrors stick together. To such a "suddenly" was devoted the letter, sent by Irina Razumovskaya — the ward of our Hesed, a reader of the "Gordon Boulevard".

This story has no names, no exact dates, nor even the subject around which the events unfolded. However, the story seems typical, and therefore veracious. Typical, except the remarkable ending. Not a happy end, though it suggests not so much about combination of circumstances, but of a certain power creating intricate patterns of our meetings and partings. In the occasion, which will be discussed, the backbone of this force was the decency and sense of duty of the father of Irina — Vladimir Alekseyevych Razumovsky. His hands connected one of a million threads ragged by the war.

Volodia Razumovsky went himself to the military commissariat and asked to come to the front as a volunteer. He had to lie and add to his age: he was not yet 18. The newcomer was identified as an ordinary soldier and sent to machine gun training school.

He passed unharmed the Stalingrad thick and firing lines the Orel-Kursk operation. Victory in these battles determined the outcome of the entire war. So, the machine gunner Razumovsky was also advancing this victory. It's about the people like him is sang the song of Victory which smells of gunpowder.

Fate preserved a young fighter from harm, while it got exhausted from the daily and nightly bombardment that promised a meaningless and incalculable homicide of someone else's sons and loved ones. He was encircled, together with the commander fought back with last bit of his strength. When the commander was wounded, he shouldered him and crawled to friendlies. At the path Razumovsky was badly wounded himself, but at the cost of enormous effort he had crawled.

Many years later, somebody called in the door of Razumovsky’s apartment and Vladimir Alekseyevych, having kissed the guest, told relatives: "Meet Fyodor Sabesevic, he came from the Far East." It turned out to be the same commander whom Vladimir carried at his back from the encirclement. Fyodor said that he submitted his Savior to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, but, perhaps, the documents were lost. Vladimir Alekseyevych finished the war with Order of the Red Star, Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class, the Order for Courage, 3rd class and the Medal for Bravery. But he regarded the biggest reward was his life.

He could never forget the day when he creeped out from the encirclement — August 2, 1943. In the times of peace this day was celebrated as his second birthday. Much later, the terrible statistics became known: only three out of every 100 boys born in 1922-1923 came back alive from the war. He felt indebted to those buried in a huge mass grave of the Great War for the Fatherland.

Volodya's mother, Maria Mikhailovna received a death notice for son. But she couldn't accept the death of her son so she didn’t believe in the death notice. Since the troop trains from the West began to arriving after 9 May, every day she went to the railway station to meet his son. As the song says, "Wait for me, and I'll come back" — it's not just about beloved ones, but also about mothers.

After marriage, Vladimir has accustomed everyone at home to the fact that every 2 August the Banquet table was set and the guests invited. As the years passed, the war events seemed more distant to people, but Razumovsky family didn’t forget anything. Despite the fact that Vladimir did not like to go into details of the experience he went through. He only silently cried while watching movies about the war on the TV. My daughters came up and wiped his tears, and he always said the same: "I don't understand how we could go through it. I do not understand..."

Irina RAZUMOVSKAYA tells:

"And still sometimes the dad dropped a few words about the war. So we learned that wounded he was taken by a sanitary train from the battlefront. He was lying on the shelf, from head to toes mounted in plaster. The nurse who accompanied the wagon walked up and said, "Soon we’ll arrive to the station in Tbilisi, it's warm out there". Dad was lucky to be left in a Tbilisi hospital.

He was cured long, for a few months — finally he felt better and rose to his feet. And again started thinking about the forefront.

Almost on the eve of discharge from the hospital the doctor came into the ward and said, "Is here anybody from Kiev?" Only dad answered... Then the doctor handed him the photo. It was very crumpled, covered with dried bloody bleed lines. Despite this, one could see the face of a beautiful lady.

The doctor explained: just recently the young soldier died on the operating table; he gave the photograph to the doctor before surgery and asked to find a girl living in Kiev if he does not survive.

The doctor said that the last requests should be executed. So my dad thought too. He began to examine the photo and on the back he has read an ordinary handwriting: "For a long memory to beloved (soldier name) from (name of the girl)." There was nothing more on it."

Vladimir came back from the war a year later than others. In 1946 he continued to serve in Iran in the Soviet troops. That's why he didn’t say mom he was alive, — they were not allowed to write.

"From the time of the army service in Tehran, — Irina tells, — dad recalled how he witnessed the case when the grimy teenagers in rags pulled out a loaf of bread straight from the hands of a soldier. He chased after them and raised his rifle. The dad stopped him: "What are you doing — it’s hungry children!" Generally, the most favorite saying of his was: "One should be able to give as for everyone can take".

Stalin had already considered the issue of the oil flow solved, which should have flown from Iran on the Soviet bayonets, but in the White house the modest Roosevelt was succeeded by the belligerent Truman, and Churchill uttered the famous Fulton speech, signaling the beginning of the Cold war. Iran had almost become the battleground of a war between the USA and the USSR, if anything, the Soviet troops and the Americans were a step away from an armed conflict. But it all went all right — Stalin withdrew the Soviet contingent from Iran.

Demobilized soldiers carried expensive trophies from the South, mostly leather coats. Vladimir carried as the most precious thing to the empty Kiev a bag of rice and the photograph of the unknown girl. For many, the war has faded into insignificance. To the foreground came the struggle for survival, food coupons, and job search.

Khreshchatyk was still in the ruins. As for Red Square, it drove the endless column of Germans, some of which were demonstratively hung like garlands on the undamaged lampposts, and some were forced to rebuild the main street again. From the East were returning refugees. Along with them went the guys who by the call of Komsomol had to breathe a new life in the city.

In this human whirlwind the demobilized soldier Razumovsky was looking for a girl from a photograph of the dead soldier. The fact that there weren’t the addresses (in the years of ruin and the great migration of people the address could mean nothing) and even her surname, did not stop Vladimir. Like his mother, who stubbornly went to the railway station, Vladimir believed that sooner or later he will find the one whom the deceased soldier loved. There was not a single man that Volodia met, whom he hadn’t shown the photograph of a girl.

Before the war, Volodia had managed to become a master of sports in Greco-Roman wrestling, bronze medalist of the championship of Ukraine, a student at the medical institute. But though he still visited a gym frequently, despite the consequences of injury, he decided to refuse of higher education because of the lack of funds. He entered the medical college, dental faculty. Having graduated from the college, he changed several places of work and wherever he worked, even many years after he showed to colleagues and patients the picture - maybe someone will recognize?

— Has someone recognized it? — I asked Irina when we met.

— No, it has happened even more amazingly.

In 1960, dad got a new job in the polyclinic of watermen at Podol. As usual, he showed the picture to the new employees and told its story. He was flocked about by a semicircle, the photograph passed from hands to hands, people looked at it carefully. Suddenly everyone heard behind a clunk. People turned around and saw that a woman passed out on the floor.

It turned out, she recognized her picture. Having recovered herself, she cried: "Vovochka, you have restored my faith. I thought he left me." "The strangest thing," — said our father later, — that she hasn’t ever think that the guy had died."

Since then the family of Vladimir Razumovsky knew that their father accomplished his duty. However, he never spoke anything more about the fate of this woman. They did not ask: they know that the father didn’t like to be pumped for information. Then there were more important things to think about.

Vladimir became seriously ill, tired of hardships when going into hospitals. The time came when he ceased to walk, did not rise of his bed and could not even walk to the monument of Glory on the day of the 60thanniversary of the Victory. For him it would be another stroke, - he went there every year, wearing a light suit and medal pads. Irina asked her boss to give her a car and drove my father to the monument. On one of the nearby streets they were stopped by a young police officer: further ride was prohibited. And yet she managed to persuade the officer, he understood the case and allowed to drive the car into the Park of Glory, which is not allowed even to members of the government.

— Now, — said Irina, when it was a year since the dad had died, me and my mom, reviewing his photographs, remembered the case with a stranger woman and decided to write to the editor. This was a tribute to our wonderful father and his rare human decency. It is sad, but, in fact, some other, less conscientious, man would have forgotten about someone else's photograph and wouldn't bother for so many years. Then the miracle would not have happened and the request of the dying soldier would remain unfulfilled, and his lover would have never learned the truth.

Source: http://bulvar.com.ua/gazeta/archive/s18_61954/4448.html

15 years after the war, he found the girl of dead fellow countryman....

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