During World War I, the tsarist army left the Osovets fortress in eastern Poland, leaving it in a dilapidated state. In the era of revolutionary hard times, no one remembered the fortress, until in the twenties the new owners, the Poles, took up its restoration. When Polish soldiers cleared one of the blown-up tunnels, someone shouted out of the darkness in Russian: "Stop, who is coming ?!"
9 years in office
This legendary story took place in 1924 during the dismantling of the rubble that blocked the entrance to a secret warehouse. A man in the uniform of the Russian army who met the Poles underground said that his commander in 1915 ordered him to guard supplies. The sentry warned that, according to the order, he would have to open fire if someone approached him.
The only thing that can induce him to leave his post is the order of the breeder. In vain, the Polish officers who spoke Russian assured him that neither the imperial army nor the sovereign himself was in the world - the sentry was adamant. As a result, the military contacted the President of Poland himself and received from him a personal order for the sentry, allowing him to leave the guard. When the corresponding telegram was read to the Russian soldier, he agreed to surrender his weapons and let the Poles into the warehouse.
In the dark with a rifle
The hero said that all these years he ate food from the warehouse - there were a lot of canned food, which turned out to be quite suitable for consumption. He satisfied his thirst with groundwater. The Underground Robinson had grown a long beard, but his 1891 rifle was in excellent condition. During his stay in the warehouse, the soldier regularly changed his overcoat and underwear. Air was supplied to the room from a ventilation shaft, and the only external light source was a small gap. In almost complete darkness, for many years the sentry counted the days, making notches on the wall when the crack at dawn turned red. In addition to loneliness and unsanitary conditions, the sentry's serious problem was the proliferating rats, with which he had to wage a desperate struggle.
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After being released from the bright sun, the Russian soldier suffered blindness - he had been in the dark for too long. According to some sources, the man went blind completely, according to others - partially. The former private of the tsarist army spent some time in a hospital in Warsaw. However, he did not want to stay in Poland and hastened to his homeland - to the Oblast of the Don army. The Poles handed him over with honors to the Soviet side at one of the railway stations, where the family came to meet the hero.
Search for a hero
Soviet publicist Sergei Smirnov, author of the book Stories of Unknown Heroes, claimed that the story of the permanent sentry was first published in the 1920s by Warsaw newspapers, which even reported the name of the sentry - Nikolaev. The blame for the incident lay with the Russian quartermaster colonel in charge of the warehouses. Initially, he received an order to destroy the casemates, but convinced the command not to do this, since the locals did not know anything about the warehouse. The underground premises were disguised by blowing up the entrance with dynamite. The sentry left inside was supposed to be released when the Russians recaptured Osovets from the Germans - in 1915 no one doubted that this would happen very soon. However, history ordered differently. The sentry might never have gone outside if the White Guard colonel had not survived the Civil War - in the end it was he,having gone abroad, he told the Poles about a secret underground warehouse.
The essay "Permanent watch" published in 1960 in the magazine "Ogonyok" aroused great interest among Soviet readers. Sergei Smirnov received letters from those who allegedly saw the hero of the publication or read about him in the press of the 1920s. Indeed, it turned out that in 1924-1925 about the sentry locked in the fortress Osovets told the magazine "World Pathfinder" and other Soviet media. The story was passed on in different versions, and gradually turned from a real incident into a plot of urban folklore. And although most often it was about a certain Nikolaev or about Ivan Ivashin, neither the man himself, nor his relatives could be found. This is reported by Rambler. Further: