The war is not over until the last soldier is buried. In Myasnoy Bor, in the Novgorod region, where in 1942 the 2nd Shock Army was killed, thousands of soldiers were not buried. And to this day, the surrounding residents and pathfinders, conducting excavations at the battlefield, see vague shadows going into a deadly bayonet attack, hear screams in Russian and German, the whistle of bullets and the clang of caterpillars. The war continues.
Anomalous zone
The villagers do not go to this forest for mushrooms. Anyway, here they try not to walk alone, even during the day. It's kind of scary here, uncomfortable. It seems that unkind eyes are constantly watching you from the depths of the thicket.
But every summer, as soon as the roads dry out, the townspeople, armed with bayonet shovels and primitive metal detectors, go into the forest. Quite a few of them are black search engines, those who are attracted by profit, who then sell the found weapons and other items of the wartime, which are of considerable value today. But the majority are still "white" search engines, people are honest, disinterested and stubborn.
They come from Veliky Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Moscow and other places of our Motherland to find unnamed burials, to find unburied remains of soldiers in thickets, gullies and swamps, to identify them if possible and to bury them with military honors.
In this forest swampy valley 30 kilometers from Veliky Novgorod, which has become an anomalous zone, people observe strange phenomena associated with the war. The old name Myasnoy Bor turned out to be symbolic. During the Loban operation of 1942, soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Shock Army, units of the German Wehrmacht, the Spanish "Blue Division" and other troops were killed here in bloody battles.
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About 300 thousand Soviet soldiers remained on the battlefield, which was dozens of times higher than the enemy's losses. To date, 11,000 remains have been found. And how many of them have not yet been buried ?! They say that the souls of missing soldiers cannot leave until they are reburied. And that is why many of the search engines of the combined detachment "Valley" saw the ghosts of the soldiers, some in general, in some mysterious way, for a few seconds found themselves in the past, in the center of the battles. These are the so-called chronomirages.
Search engines say that birds do not settle in places of mass accumulations of remains, all living things avoid them. At night in Myasnoy Bor, strange voices, as if from the other world, are heard, and at dusk in the forest you can meet soldiers in Red Army uniforms who more than once told diggers where to look for unburied bodies. They also saw something more terrible than ghosts. It is not for nothing that this place is called Death Valley.
And here I am lying
Andrei Morozov, the search engine of the Sturm detachment of the Dolina expedition, did not believe in all kinds of ghosts, until one day he saw everything with his own eyes.
- I was just beginning to excavate. Once, out of stupidity, one in the evening went to the excavation. When I returned, it was already night. And so I walk along the road and see what is around me … 1942! People, trenches, cars, dugouts, even a different forest. I've seen it all! Well, I got to the camp normally, but it was still scary. Or here one girl was digging up a soldier in the evening. And suddenly a man in a Red Army uniform comes up to her, stops and looks. She didn't pay much attention right away - there are a lot of detachments here, many guys walk in uniform.
And he said to her: “As you dig it, dig here, here is another one. And about that aspen, too. And here, under the tree, I am lying! The girl, of course, falls unconscious. Then, when I came to and told everything, they went and checked this place. In all the places where this guy pointed, they found the remains. And they also found a soldier under the tree. Among the bones there are metal buttons of the Red Army with stars. So ours was a Red Army soldier …
Grandfather's spoon
Once a local resident named Elena, together with her friends, accidentally dug up a shell crater in the forest, left over from the war. She looked into it and saw - there was a soldier. Not dead - alive. He is wearing an overcoat, a helmet, and a rifle next to him. The soldier spoke to her and asked her grandfather's last name.
She answered - Gushchin. Then the soldier handed her a wooden spoon, and on it was the inscription: "P. Gushchin." Grandfather's name was Pavel Stepanovich. He was drafted to the front from Malaya Vishera and went missing in the very places where his granddaughter came across a crater many years later.
When Elena came to her senses and looked into the funnel again, she saw nothing but a shapeless heap of scraps of matter, pieces of iron and something white that looked like fragments of human bones. But in her hand there was a wooden spoon with the name of her grandfather.
Subsequently, after questioning other local residents, the woman found out that similar incidents happened to other people whose relatives died or disappeared in the Myasny Bor area. Supernaturally, they found things in the forest that belonged to the deceased loved ones. Together with these people, Elena founded a museum, the exhibits of which were finds from the forest.
Accident on the road
Alexei Borisov from St. Petersburg tells:
- I often run along this route with a load. Work with us, you understand, is not easy - driving for days. And here I’m driving past the Meat Clock at eight in the evening, and before that I had not slept for almost three days, everything seems to be fine, but it just tends to sleep. I myself did not notice how I fell asleep. I woke up from the loud phrase: "Hey, be careful, brother!" And it seems like someone is tapping on the shoulder. I open my eyes - no one. I looked: and the car was already driving along the side of the road. He taxied. Outside the window, a monument to unknown soldiers flashed through the meat-boroughs.
It is rumored that it was the spirits of the soldiers who prevented the construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg high-speed railway, which was also supposed to pass through the Death Valley. The military began to dream of the leader of this project and numerous sponsors every day. After that, it was decided to postpone the construction for an indefinite period.
Shroud over Volkhov
Not so long ago, local guys from the village of Zakharyino (8 kilometers from Myasny Bor), walking in the evening along the Volkhov bank, saw such a terrible picture that they rushed to the village and still do not go for a walk in those places. The boys told the adults who "tortured" them what had happened that they had seen Death itself over the river.
Black ranger's black luger
I had one familiar black tracker Valera. He climbed the entire Karelian Isthmus in search of war booty. And I have been to Myasnoy Bor many times. Collected a good collection of Soviet and German weapons, sold his finds with considerable profit. He preferred to act alone, sometimes with his cousin Seryoga. We worked with this guy at the same enterprise. Sergei told me this story.
Once in Myasnoye Bor Valera, while searching, came across a skeleton. From scraps of decayed uniforms, buttons, a belt buckle and other surviving accessories, he determined that he was a German officer. And most importantly, in the holster there was a well-preserved pistol, and not just any, but the famous Luger. Valera took a pistol, a knife, field glasses, and something else - and left, leaving the skeleton unburied.
When he returned to Leningrad, the same night in a dream, a tall red-haired guy in the field uniform of the chief lieutenant appeared to him. He sharply and decisively demanded something from Valera. And although our black tracker did not know German, for some reason he understood everything. The officer ordered Valera to return to the forest and bury his bones in the ground. The guy promised to fulfill his wish, but days went by, and he was in no hurry to keep his word. Moreover, even when he was in Myasny Bor, he avoided that ravine where he found this skeleton.
Now the chief lieutenant appeared in Valery's dreams almost every night. His appearance was more and more severe and gloomy, he threatened with all kinds of punishment, up to a quick painful death.
But - I found a scythe on a stone. Now Valera did not want to bury the ashes of the enemy on principle. During the day he laughed at night fears, and at night he was covered with cold sweat.
Once Valera went to the forest for mushrooms - and disappeared. A few days later, his body was found in the forest near Kirillovsky. A bullet hole was black in the middle of his forehead. The forensic medical examination determined that the shot was fired at close range, almost point-blank, from a Luger. Perhaps the same one that Valera found in Myasnoy Bor and sold to some collector.
Nikolay VALENTINOV