Early May days have always been special. It is hard to describe really…for me this day always associated with parades, happy faces of the veterans, lots of medals, lots of flowers, hushing sound of an old records…whatever they say in media coverage of the celebrations, I have my own memories the 9th of May, and it is always touches my heart to tears…
My granddad, Nikolai Kozmin. He was in his 20s when the War started. He fought for Kursk, Orel and Stalingrad…He went through all 4 years, 1941-1945. He met my grandma when he was in hospital after being wounded…All my childhood I’ve been very close to him. And I was very proud of him too. Especially when he used to take me, with him on Victory Day’s parades each year. He stood there in his uniform, in all his medals and marching soldiers saluted to him…He used to come to my school class and speak about the War. It was a tradition back then – War veterans would share their stories with school kids…So that we will remember…
I believe it is very important – to remember. To remember and to never let this happened again…But history tends to be forgotten in generations…or re-written…or re-interpreted…With sadness I watch the discussions about whose victory it was in 1945 or whose losses were greater or who was the hero…Does it really matter? To me my granddad was is and always will be the real hero, as for any other family, who had someone fighting the War, their loved ones will always be their hero…Victory in a war is a confusing matter…we are saying – “we won”, but in fact, it was those nameless soldiers, who never returned from the battle fields, they did it for us.
60 years passed…I would like to remember all those, who gave their life so that we could say: we won the War. Regardless, whether they are 20 mln Russians or 300 thousands Americans or 6mln Polish or 370 thousands British or all the countless others…who returned home in a distant 1945 and those who never made it.
Memory is the least we can do in their honour…
It's not for us to calmly rot in graves.
We'll lie stretched out in our half-open coffins
And hear before the dawn the cannon coughing,
The regimental bugle calling gruffly
From highways which we trod, our land to save.
We know by heart all rules and regulations.
What's death to us? A thing that we despise.
Lined up in graves, our dead detachment lies
Awaiting orders. And let generations
To come, when talking of the dead, be wise;
Dead men have ears and eyes for truth and lies.
[Nikolai Mayorov, died in action in Smolensk Region in February 1942]
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The song has been written in the beginning of 1942 and became one of the front's favourites. It is just a soldier thinking of his sweetheart in between the battles...I cannot do poetry in English, but the translation goes approximately like this:
The night is dark,
Only bullets are whining in the steppe,
Only wind’s buzzing into the wires,
Stars are faintly twinkling.
I know that you,
My sweetheart, do not sleep this dark night
You are secretly wiping off tear
Sitting by your child’s cradle.
How do I love all that depth of your loving sweet eyes!
How do I want touch them now with my lips, with kisses!
The night is dark,
Separates us, my dearest girl,
And disturbing, unsettled, black steppe
Lies forever between us.
I do believe –
You’re my dearest friend to the end.
This belief keeps me safe at all times
In the night from the bullets.
Happy I am.
And content in a mortal combat
For I know that you’ll meet me with love,
No matter what happen.
Death doesn’t scare,
As I've met her not once in the steppe
Even now, while I’m singing this song,
She’s whirling around me…
You wait for me,
By the cot and you can’t fall asleep
Hence I know for sure - to me
Nothing bad never happen...