My father went to the front in August 1942, was wounded twice, and reached Berlin. I remember one of his stories relating, approximately, to July 45. At that time, my father was still in Berlin and was waiting for demobilization:
- One day we were in a suburb of Berlin, not destroyed by the war, as part of a patrol of three people: the commander is a young lieutenant who has not fought, and we are two private front-line soldiers. At some point, a 40-50-year-old German woman ran up to us screaming and began calling for us. It turned out that two soldiers had climbed into the garden near her house and were tearing up Victoria. This is the first time I saw this berry, much larger and redder than the Siberian wild strawberry. The soldiers behaved normally, they did not trample the beds, but simply carefully picked the berries and ate. At that time, an order was in force - rapists and robbers from among the military had the right to shoot on the spot. The Germans were aware of these strict laws and often complained about any, even minor, matter.
But the soldiers, apparently, did not consider it a great violation that they ate the berry, and therefore did not try to hide, but calmly went out to the patrol.
But the officer was young, fresh from school. He either wanted to curry favor, or the paragraphs of the charter that the order should be carried out, regardless of the circumstances, or maybe he was just a foolish person, were firmly stuck in his head. Who knows?
He began to shout at the soldiers, unbuttoning his pistol holster. My partner and I realized that having inflamed himself with a cry, he could shoot at the soldiers. Then we, holding our weapons at the ready, pushed the soldiers back, and began to slowly approach the chief of the guard. Thank God that he realized how everything could end, and put the pistol in a holster. The soldiers, seeing support, did not hesitate and left.
I, indignant, turned to the German woman and began to look at her, but I did not see her, but hundreds of shot and tortured Belarusian women, children, old people lying in the streets, in houses and on the roads. The chests gutted in the huts, from which they took the most valuable, broken, trampled icons and portraits.
I remembered the photographs taken from the killed Germans, where they posed with smiles against the background of hanged, tortured people, ruined houses.
I came to my senses when the German woman began to say something pitifully and with fear to me, apparently realized that she had done something wrong. She ran into the house, brought out a large cup of the collected Victoria and began to stick it into our hands, but we moved away so as not to break loose. Because of some kind of berry, soldiers who lived to see Victory could die.
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