🙂 Hello dear readers! I would like to share with you the memories of my neighbor about her father, the front-line soldier Maxim Pavlovich. Let’s call this amazing story “Charm Coin”. Listen …
Family
Maxim Pavlovich was born in 1917 in the village of Nikolsk, Abanskiy District, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Near Nikolsk was the Snarsky farm, where five brothers lived: Emelyan, Vasily, Nikolai, Pavel and Ivan. One of these brothers, Ivan, during collectivization, went home to Belarus.
Another brother, Pavel, had five children: Ignat, Nikifor, Terenty and Maxim (they were born twins) and the youngest – Olga (born in 1922). When her mother died, Olga was only six months old.
My father died soon after. The children were left unattended. One of the older brothers inadvertently cut off Terenty’s hand, the boy was left crippled.
Several years before the Great Patriotic War, Maxim and Terenty, already grown-up guys, climbed into the collective farm cellar. There they ate honey, maybe they stole something. And since Terenty was without a hand, only Maxim was condemned.
Maxim was serving his sentence in Vorkuta. Before the war, he was freed. He did not go home to Siberia, he began to work in the Kirov region, from where on January 10, 1941 he was drafted into the army. He took part in battles from January 1942 to September 1945.
He had the rank of corporal, served in artillery reconnaissance. Commissioned on January 10, 1946. He joined the CPSU in July 1943. After the war he returned home. Before retirement, he worked at the Samoilovsky state farm of the Aban district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Prediction
Maxim Pavlovich talked a lot about the war to his daughter, and then, many years ago, she told me all this. I will share her memories. In the Kirov region, her father worked at a factory and lived with an old man.
It was this old man who accompanied him to the front. As Maxim said, the old man took him to the crossroads of four roads, put him on his knees facing east, walked around him several times, and then gave a ten-kopeck coin with the words:
– While this coin is with you – do not be afraid, they will not kill. Take care of her. You will live long, but poor. You will give birth to many children.
It was quite easy to die in the war, but Maxim believed that he was protected by a coin. Once part of them stood in a birch forest, scout dugouts were nearby. Maxim went to play cards with them.
“We’re playing, but I really wanted to return to my unit, to my location,” he recalled. – I went out into the street, it’s dark … I went to my friends. And then the shelling began. I started to run away. He ran away, turned around, and instead of a dugout – a funnel, and not a single living person …
Wound
With a coin-amulet presented by the old man, Maxim went through almost the entire war. The coin was lost shortly before the Victory. At the next change of linen, I forgot my amulet in the pocket where the medallion should have been. Then he was wounded.
Maxim dragged cannons on a tractor. Suddenly, from somewhere in this roar and chaos, a cat appeared and ran across his path. And the next day he was wounded in the arm and his fingers were injured. Two shards got stuck in his hand and gradually overgrown with cloth.
One fragment was then removed, and the other was not touched, they said that it was possible to touch the nerve fibers. He kept the removed shard. His children sometimes looked at the “piece of death”. It was shiny, jagged, hard, and caused some kind of unpleasant sensation.
When asked how truthfully the war was shown in the movies, the old soldier said that the sound of the bombings was very similar. In general, there are many deaths in the war and a constant feeling of severe hunger. Maxim was very thin, emaciated, and the lieutenant took him as an orderly.
Then he ate a little. This, too, may have saved his life, because in the war they died not only from their wounds, but also from hunger. According to Maxim, the scariest sound there is the whistle of a falling bomb. Not everyone’s nerves could stand it.
A soldier fought with him, who instantly fell asleep at the sound of artillery preparation or the whistle of bombs. There were those who wanted to shoot such a soldier. But their lieutenant explained that this is a protective reaction of the nervous system and nothing can be done about it. That soldier wore a pectoral cross.
Order of the Red Star
Maxim Pavlovich also had awards, but he said almost nothing about them, did not like to brag. Although he had great respect for the Order of the Red Star and the Medal For Courage. After the war, pioneers from Latvia and fellow soldiers sent him letters.
And that old man was right! After the war, Maxim Pavlovich had seven daughters, they lived poorly, but amicably. My neighbor, Galina Maksimovna, is the oldest of his daughters. Then, when her father had already died, she very much regretted that she hadn’t talked much with him, because she could have learned a lot of interesting things. But, alas, time does not spare anyone.
Youth advice: do not miss the opportunity to ask, talk with the remaining veterans, home front workers, children of war. This is our history, our past, we must know it and remember the feat of our people, our fathers and brothers.
Friends, if you liked the story “Charm Coin”, share it on social networks. 😉 Thank you!