His battalion
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His battalion ( Belarusian Яго батальён, Russian Его батальон , Jewo batalon) is a novella by the Belarusian writer Wassil Bykau , which appeared in the December 1975 issue of the Maladosz literary magazine in Minsk . The author translated the text into Russian in 1976. In the same year the amendment was in Issue 22 of twice a month in Moscow appearing newspaper novel published. Also in 1976, the Moscow publisher Molodaja gwardija published the story of a day in the battle of the " Hero of the Soviet Union , commander of the 294th Rifle Regiment Major Mikalaj Ivanawitsch Waloschun, killed on March 24, 1945, buried in a mass grave 350 meters northwest of the village of Steindorf (East Prussia ) ”In book form.
Alexander Karpow filmed his battalion in 1989 with Vitaly Sikora in the lead role.
action
Around 17 ° C on a March day on the Eastern Front . The battle of Stalingrad is history, but the Germans are still in the country . Captain Waloschun, the son of an accountant from Vitebsk , who has been in command of a rifle battalion for seven months - previously a company commander in the same battalion - receives a visit from the general personally. The captain and his infantrymen are supposed to storm a hill occupied by the Germans in one blow. In view of the expanded positions five hundred meters away and the presumably well-organized fire system of the Germans, Waloschun sees himself incapable of the ordered attack - especially since more than half of his subordinates have been killed or wounded in previous battles. On top of that, the assigned artillery regiment lacks ammunition.
Further contradiction is pointless. The battalion, which has been reduced to company strength, is replenished. The newcomers from Central Asia don't speak a word of Russian. Artillery ammunition is not supplied. Neither engineers nor tanks are available.
Order is order. There is no longer any talk of the awarding of the Order of the Red Banner , announced by the regimental commander Major Hunko by telephone . The captain has to attack and instructs his fighters: “Memorize the law of infantry: work on the enemy in a flash and take him out!” The losses are considerable. So that the battalion is not worn out, Waloschun orders a retreat. His superior, the "nagging, bilious" Major Hunko, demands that the attack be repeated immediately. Because the captain refuses because of a lack of ammunition, the major replaces him with Lieutenant Markin, who was the battalion's chief of staff, who was devoted to him. Markin, an eccentric who is always serious, goes straight to the execution of Hunko's order. Waloschun, chilled, has to watch from the shelter as his companies torment their way up to the hill. Finally he can no longer stand the inactivity and takes the place of a fallen shooter on a still intact machine-gun on the slope . Before that, he stopped four fleeing riflemen and formed the small group of five to attack. The attackers, together with a company from the battalion, throw the Germans out of their trenches on the hill; win the trench war .
The division commander has deposed Major Hunko. Waloschun, who has proven himself as a gunner at the machine gun and in the trench, does not know whether he will be allowed to command his battalion again.
Major Kaskow
As in other Bykauz stories, unbelievable human suffering and death are part of everyday war life. Three examples from the story:
Markin's regiment of the 39th Army encircled near Nelidowo was wiped out. With only eleven men, he could break out. The regimental commissar had previously shot himself and the commander had succumbed to typhus .
On Waloschun's orders, the pregnant medical instructor Unter Sergeant Werazennikawa is supposed to withdraw to the stage before the attack. The medic defies the order and goes into battle with company commander Lieutenant Samochin, the father-to-be. The unmarried couple and their unborn perish in it. Samochin had fallen before his wife. She had taken over the command of his seventh company and had stopped fleeing soldiers.
Those shooters who obey the order to attack first will fall. During the first of the two attacks, Waloschun met one of his fallen fighters immediately after a series of detonations. The brain mass oozes out of his gaping head wound. Wassil Bykau writes: "... gray splashes covered the collar and shoulders with the new, accurately sewn shoulder pieces."
In the context of such atrocities during the war, an almost comedic interlude seems out of place at first glance: three controllers from the regimental and divisional headquarters enter Waloschun's dugout - including the division veterinarian Major Kaskow. The latter angered the captain when he inquired of the infantry with pedantic zeal about the number of horses. Waloschun fled from the three higher-ranking officers to his people in the foxholes, but could not get rid of the stubborn veterinarian who tied the earflaps of his cap at his chin during the entire first attack on the hill. Major Kaskov's clumsiness, to Waloschun's annoyance, cannot be outdone by any of the attackers from the rifle chain surrounding the two officers. For example Kaskow clog the barrel of his revolver at the approach crawl to the enemy uphill and will have the earth from the barrel pulen .
In any case, after the first attack, which was aborted in front of Major Hunko, Major Kaskow defends Captain Waloschun's decision to withdraw and wants to report to the division about Hunko's behavior. In this way, the plausibility of Hunko's removal is also checked.
German-language editions
- His battalion. Translated from the Russian by Günter Löffler . P. 109–313 in Wassil Bykau: The Obelisk. His battalion. Novellas. Publishing house Volk und Welt. Berlin 1980 (1st edition)
Web links
- Full text
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Belarusian: Маладосць, youth , organ of the Belarusian Writers' Union
- ↑ Russian: Роман-газета
- ↑ Russian Молодая гвардия (издательство), Young Guard
- ↑ Edition used, p. 313, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Russian Карпов, Александр Яковлевич (1922–1998)
- ↑ Russian Зикора, Виталий Григорьевич (born 1922)
- ↑ Russian entry at kino-teatr.ru
- ↑ Edition used, p. 163, 18. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 238, 14. Zvo
- ↑ military gliding