LEM (Lem) Stanislav (b. 1921) - Polish thinker, philosopher, science fiction writer. Major works: "The Man from Mars" (1946); "The Astronauts" (1950); "Magellan Cloud" (1955); "Dialogues" (1958); "Star Diaries" (1954, 1958); "Return from the Stars" (1961); "Solaris" (1961); "Entering Orbit" (1962);

Anya Morozova One of the most amazing heroines of the Second World War is Anya Morozova, who became widely known among us thanks to the film “Calling Fire on Ourselves,” where her role was brilliantly played by Lyudmila Kasatkina. But few people know that the Seshchinsky underground, about which

Boyarina Morozova 1887. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Feodosia Prokofievna Morozova (1632–1675) was one of the heroines of the church schism. A motley crowd crowds around the sleigh to look at the condemned woman. On the right, next to the sleigh, is Morozova’s sister,

She was born on May 23, 1921 in the village of Polyany, now the Mosalsky district of the Kaluga region, into a peasant family. Russian. She lived in the city of Bryansk, then in the village of Seshcha, Dubrovsky district, Bryansk region. Graduated from 8th grade, accounting courses. She worked in her specialty. During the Great Patriotic War, from May 1942 to September 1943, Komsomol member Anna Morozova was the leader of the underground international Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak organization in the village of Seshcha as part of the 1st Kletnyanskaya Partisan Brigade. She obtained valuable information about the enemy, organized sabotage to blow up aircraft and disable other military equipment. Based on its intelligence data, on June 17, 1942, the partisans defeated the garrison of the enemy air base in the village of Sergeevka, Dubrovsky district, Bryansk region, destroying 200 flight personnel and 38 vehicles. In September 1943, having emerged from underground, she joined the Red Army. In June 1944 she graduated from radio operator courses. As a fighter of the reconnaissance group of the intelligence department of the headquarters of the 10th Army, she was thrown into the territory of Poland. From the end of 1944 she was in a joint Soviet-Polish partisan detachment. On December 31, 1944, in a battle near the city of Plock, A.A. Morozova was wounded and, in order to avoid being captured, she blew herself up with a grenade. She was buried in the village of Radzanovo, 12 kilometers east of the city of Plock, Republic of Poland. By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated May 8, 1965, for the exemplary performance of combat missions of the command and the courage and heroism shown in battles with the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War, Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. She was awarded the Order of Lenin, a medal, and a foreign order. A bust of the Heroine was erected in Victory Park in the city of Mosalsk, Kaluga Region. In the village of Seshcha, a monument to the heroes of the international underground with a bust of a girl was erected. The books “Swan Song”, “Calling Fire on Ourselves” (a story by O. Gorchakov and J. Przymanowski) and the serial television film of the same name, filmed in 1963-64 by director S. Kolosov, are dedicated to her feat. Streets in the cities of Bryansk, Zhukovka, the urban village of Dubrovka in the Bryansk region and the city of Mosalsk are named after Anna Morozova; a museum was created in Moscow school No. 710. Poland awarded the Russian intelligence officer the Grunwald Cross.

On June 27, 2010, a solemn opening ceremony of the monument took place in a small cemetery in the Polish village of Radzanovo and was timed to coincide with the “Day of Partisans and Underground Workers.” A delegation from the Bryansk region headed by State Duma deputy Viktor Malashenko arrived in Poland to participate in this event. “By the example of caring for the memory of Anna Morozova, we honor all patriots.” “We want to show our people that politicians come and go, but the good relations that exist between ordinary people have been and will remain. This friendship, forged in the joint struggle against the Nazi occupiers, will not be taken away by anyone,” Malashenko said. The administration of the Bryansk region, the intelligence officer’s homeland, took the initiative to honor her memory. She was supported by local residents. Now the scout’s burial place is decorated with a granite slab with a photograph and a memorial inscription in Russian and Polish.

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was born in the Smolensk region. In 1935, she moved with her parents to the village of Seschu.

During the occupation of Seschi, Anya took an active part in the creation of an international underground. Anya Morozova’s group obtained information about the deployment of enemy units in Seshche and drew up a detailed plan of the fascist air base. As a result, Soviet aviation carried out a number of precision strikes on the airfield. Based on Morozova’s intelligence, the partisans destroyed a rest house for German pilots in the village of Sergeevka. More than 200 enemy soldiers and officers were killed, 38 buses and cars were burned. Under her leadership, in 1943, underground fighters carried magnetic mines onto the airfield. More than once Anya warned the partisans about punitive expeditions being prepared against them.

After the liberation of Seschi by Soviet troops, Anya Morozova, as part of a reconnaissance group, was thrown deep behind enemy lines.

In September 1944, she died in an unequal battle: being surrounded by the Nazis, she, wounded, blew herself up and her enemies with a grenade.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in May 1965, Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

T.K. Dandykin,
"In the name of the fallen and the living", 2000

  Swans don't change

They flew high into the sky over the black ashes of burned villages, over the withered stubble of compressed fields and over forests painted with the fiery colors of October. In the slanting rays of the morning sun rising behind the Desna, they seemed like white-hot firebirds, beautiful and unattainable.

In the first and second war autumns, living in Sesche, occupied by the enemy, Anya did not notice the passage of swans. Either in those days she more often looked at the ground, into the smoking trough with the hated German linen, or the swans, avoiding the front line, then changed their eternal path from north to south.

But now, on this first October after liberation, Anya again watched for a long time the flocks of birds flying south, and, as happened in childhood, when she lived in the forested Kaluga side, in the village of Polyany near the ancient town of Mosalsk, she wondered what was in store for her. swans on the way, beyond the valleys and mountains, and wished them a happy flight.

It was one of her earliest memories, shrouded in the haze of time, but always vaguely looming in the beautiful distance. The friends, seeing the flock of swans, ran out of the outskirts to see off the fast-winged birds, and she, Anya, the smallest of all, lagged behind and fell, breaking her knees, and cried, because the friends, having run after the wonderful firebirds into the open field and the flaming oak forest in the distance , abandoned her, leaving her alone.

On winter evenings, when the angry blizzard hummed in the chimney and the ten-line lamp blinked fearfully, the grandmother, having put the hungry Anya to bed, told her fairy tales. And Anya especially loved that fairy tale in which the maidens magically became white swans...

Then, when dad moved the whole family to Bryansk and fourteen-year-old Anya went to city school, she longed for a long time for her native village, for songs at girls’ gatherings, for dewy meadows and red snowstorms in a leafless birch grove, for a sleigh, for a wreath of cornflowers that floated away along the quiet river, and by the swans, by the farewell flaps of their sunny-white strong wings. At such moments, Anya was overcome by a vague sadness, and an unclear feeling of loneliness and abandonment pressed in her chest.

The same feeling ached in her heart even now, when she looked after the flying swans, wandering in the field near Seshcha. Only now this feeling was much stronger.

Very little time passed after that day, the happiest in Anya’s life, when the first “thirty-four” burst into the burning Sescha, into the air town destroyed by the Germans, beyond which stretched an airfield with a blown up runway. It was the time of the happiest meetings and the saddest partings.

They met again, the closest and dearest people in the world, friends from the underground, the Czech Wendelin, the Poles Jan Bolshoy and Vacek Messiash, the partisan brigade commander Danchenkov and the intelligence chief "Uncle Kolya", the underground women Lyusya Senchilina, Pasha Bakutina and she, Anya, the leader of the international underground at a powerful Nazi airbase, a girl who for almost two years waged an incredibly difficult and dangerous secret war with this airbase, with its commandants Colonel Duda and Lieutenant Colonel Arweiler, with the agents of SS-Obersturmführer Werner, with the entire formidable Luftwaffe machine. And Wendelin, and the Poles, and Pasha Bakutina - they all left after the war, after the fleeing fascists. All of them, young, cheerful, strong, drunk from victory, were full of the most rosy hopes, talked about the imminent defeat of the enemy and called her, Anya, their commander, with them.

Where should I go? - Anya then waved her hand. - The house burned down, there is nothing to eat, dad is going to the army, mom is sick, my sisters are hungry like jackdaws...

And they left, Anya’s brothers-in-arms, they left to fight.

Until then, Panna Anya!

Be healthy, Anyuto!

Goodbye Janek and Vacek! Goodbye, Wendo!

The first days of liberation, the first days of irrepressible joy and new difficult worries have passed. Anya reveled in the feeling of freedom and, not knowing fatigue, dismantled the ruins. Now she was not working for the Germans, now she would never have to wash German linen.

Soon she was hired to work in a construction office, and Anya, after two years under the bombs, was at first happy about this quiet work, happy about the food card and the monthly small but constant salary, which she gave entirely to her mother.

But now wild swans are flying south, towards unknown dangers, and Anya, watching their flight, involuntarily compares herself to some tamed swan whose wings have been clipped. This swan lives happily in a quiet and safe pond, among snails and frogs. But at the sight of a flock of its free brothers flying over the pond, at the sound of a trumpet call calling into the distance, a powerful instinct awakens in the heart of the bird and, obeying the irresistible call of its ancestors, the swan beats its wings, trying to soar after the flock, behind the running clouds. And neither storms, nor hurricanes, nor fierce eagles, nor hunting grapeshot fear the swan. But his efforts are in vain. The flock flies away, the proud neck droops in exhaustion, and the goggle-eyed frogs croak mockingly in the pond...

More and more often, while typing some order on an old angular Underwood for an organization restoring an air base, Anya freezes over the typewriter, and her eyes see not the lines of the order, but the faces of her friends. Unforgettable dear faces of those who died - Kostya Povarov, Vanya Aldyukhov, Moti Erokhin... And the faces of those who survived and went back to war.

- “Wait for me, and I will return...” - the song flows from the loudspeaker.

It seemed to Anya that she had learned to wait even in that first war autumn. They told her “wait” and she waited. I waited while the Germans from the Sonderkommando drove the Dubrovka Jews into an old forge, doused them with gasoline, set them on fire and, tearing their stomachs, playing harmonicas, watched as people burned alive performed the “Totentanz” - “dance of death”. I waited for the Heinkels to take off from the airfield, roaring annoyingly, and fly away with bombs to the east towards Moscow. She waited and then, when Kostya Povarov came with a white policeman’s bandage, and they began their secret war against the invaders, and the Seshenians spat after both Povarov and her.

Wait, Anya! Every dog ​​has his day! - Kostya told her, gritting his teeth.

They cursed Kostya, they frightened small children with his name, the partisans sentenced him to death in absentia, and he waited and taught her, Anya, to wait.

And she waited. She was reinstated in the Komsomol and given a new ticket. Soon she was to be called to receive her award at front headquarters. But for some reason now it was even more difficult for her to wait. Perhaps because earlier during the occupation, the fulfillment of her desires did not depend on herself...

But Kostya never waited, although he lived only in anticipation.

Kostya! - Anya persuaded the first leader of the Seshchin underground organization. - Well, let’s at least tell our underground fighters, the most reliable of our comrades, about you so that they know what kind of policeman you are!

No, Anya! And don't think! What kind of policeman I am, they know at the headquarters of the Tenth Army, Danchenkov knows. And that's enough for now. Let's wait. When our people return, you and I will walk through the village, and then everyone will know...

This was one of the first lessons Kostya taught his faithful assistant. And how much he taught her! If it weren’t for Kostya’s school, Anya would never have been able to lead the underground organization and lead all three of its groups: Soviet, Polish and Czechoslovakian, and they would never have been able to inflict such heavy damage on the enemy, directing Soviet pilots to the airbase, mining fascist planes at the airfield ...

It was Kostya who taught her to find among the Seshchinites people who were morally ready for a feat, a difficult feat of an underground fighter. Kostya involved Anya and many of his fellow countrymen in the fight. And he was not mistaken in any of those whom he chose. And Anya never made a mistake about the people whom she trusted with everything - the fate of the organization, the lives of its members, the lives of her entire family and her own life.

Kostya poured strength into her heart and armed Anya with his faith in victory. It was as if he was leading Anya, holding her still unsure, weak hand with his strong, firm male hand, and led her through all the dangers. But he was aware that, playing a double role, he seemed to be balancing on the edge of a knife, and this was unlikely to last long. It was necessary to teach Anya independence so that she could balance on the edge of a knife without outside help. And Kostya did this wisely and carefully, giving Anya more and more freedom of action, encouraging her every independent decision, every reasonable initiative. He did this with the same patience with which birds teach their chicks to fly. He firmly believed that Anya was born to fly and fly high...

On that spring day, Kostya was hurrying into the forest. They say he was summoned to Moscow. He had long dreamed of visiting the mainland, among his own people, where they knew what a painfully difficult role he had to play, posing as a traitor to the Motherland.

It exploded on a partisan mine. The Seshchinites spat and grumbled: “It’s a dog’s death for a dog!” And Anya’s heart was breaking from unbearable pain. It seemed to her that the world was collapsing around her, that everything was lost, that no one could replace Kostya as the leader of the Seshchinsky underground, which stood on the threshold of its most difficult and important affairs. But Kostya had already managed to teach her to fly, and even after his death Anya felt his support, his firm male hand.

Anya came to Kostya’s grave near the village of Strukovka, where more than a year ago a fiery tornado that burst out of the ground cut short the hero’s life. The October leafy wind ruffled the last leaves of the cemetery birches. The grave mound has sagged, the column with the half-erased inscription made in ink pencil has become askew. Anya placed under the post a bunch of belated autumn flowers that she came across on the way from Seshcha.

And the swans, flock after flock, all flew south. We flew over the Kletnyansky forest, empty after the departure of the partisans, over the oak urems of the winding Vetma, over the beautiful Desna, which also carries its waters to the south, to the Chernigov and Kyiv lands...

Returning to Sescha, Anya could not pass by the remains of the Heinkel lying in the field. This plane exploded with all the bombs from a mine planted by Jan the Little during the days of the great Battle of Kursk. Anya stood motionless for a long time, looking at the wreckage, and her thoughts were carried away to the west, to where her friends had gone...

Anya knew exactly what she had to do to regain her wings. First, she needs to settle her family in a new apartment, then wait until her mother gets better, save some money and get her father’s first transfer from the army, stock up on potatoes and firewood for the winter... Everything that they pay her in the army, she will, of course, send home .

She knew that her mother would cry and persuade her. Why, they say, shouldn’t you live at home now that the Germans have been driven out! Have you been sitting with your hands folded? Didn't she risk her life enough? Have you done enough for your Motherland? Mom will beg: “Have pity, Anya, little sister! Have pity, Mother! You’re stone-faced, insensitive!..”

Anya heard these words on the day when she first sent Masha on reconnaissance to the airfield. Anya loved her sister, and how she loved her! But then all her assistants at the airfield were captured by the Gestapo and there was only one hope that the Nazis would not pay attention to the girl, just a child. This decision was not easy for Anya, but the Center needed information at any cost, at any cost.

In those last days before liberation, Anya felt exhausted and exhausted. In the spring, the Nazis executed Kostya Povarov’s family in Roslavl, except for his younger brother Vanya, who managed to escape. The Nazis threw Anya Antoshenkon into a sheepfold to be devoured by cannibal dogs. The arrested Jan Malenky also faced certain death; his Polish friends also ended up in the Gestapo. The Czech Wendelin ended up in a penal company - a “death company”. In those dark days, Lucy Senchilina’s little brother and sister, Edik and Emma, ​​were accidentally blown up at Magnitka by underground workers. The wounded Emma remained alive, but Edik died because Hitler’s doctors, monsters in white coats, refused to give him a blood transfusion. And Anya read a silent reproach in the eyes of not only Edik’s mother, but also in Lucy’s eyes, swollen from tears: it was your doing, it was you who arranged the transfer of mines from the forest to the airfield.

Obersturmführer Werner's bloodhounds were scouring everywhere. Day and night, Anya imagined the Gestapo, arrest, torture, execution of her entire family, father, mother and three sisters, the death of the entire organization...

Anya now greedily read everything she could get in Seshche about underground fighters, about partisans - books, essays and articles in newspapers and magazines, which were still not numerous at that time. One essay about the glorious French underground said that, according to French resistance fighters, the average life expectancy of an underground fighter was two years in the underground. This means that in Seshche at the airbase, Anya’s two years of struggle were a lifetime.

Anya herself didn’t notice how she became a military intelligence officer. Passing information about the air base to Kostya Povarov, she did not know that he was passing it on to “Uncle Vasya,” senior lieutenant Vasily Aliseychik, who was operating from the headquarters of the 10th Army beyond the Desna, at the base of Major Orlov’s brigade in the village of Dyatkovo liberated from the invaders. And the nineteen-year-old Muscovite radio operator Sergei Shkolnikov transmitted this information via radio to the mainland, to the army headquarters, first from Dyatkovo, then from the village of Semenovka and, finally, from the “Birch Corner” - a swampy birch forest near the village of Yablon. Only in the summer did Anya learn from Kostya that he had kept in touch with Aliseychik all winter and lost it when he fell ill with typhus - this was during the June blockade of '42 - and was sent with the radio operator to the front. It was then that the connection with military intelligence was interrupted. But not for long...

In the same June, exciting news reached the partisans of Danchenkov’s detachment from the village of Pavlinka: at night, troops were dropped into the local forest! Soon Danchenkov met with the commander of the landing group, a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant, and a dozen soldiers from military unit No. 9903 at the headquarters of the Western Front - a unit made famous by Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. This lieutenant was a cadet at a military school when the war began. And already on June 23, 1941, he went behind enemy lines with a mission from military unit No. 9903, and then completed several more missions. This meeting played a huge role in the life of the then young detachment of Captain Danchenkov: the lieutenant had a walkie-talkie, and he immediately connected the detachment with the Western headquarters of the partisan movement, which, having learned about the existence of a detachment that had already proven itself in combat, sent a walkie-talkie and a radio operator here.

At first, the information collected by Kostya Povarov, Anya and her friends went behind the front via the lieutenant’s radio, then it was tapped on the key by a new radio operator, Kolya Baburin. By that time, Vasily Aliseichin’s former contacts Zina Antipenkova and Shura Chernova became Danchenkov’s intelligence officers and resumed contact with Seshcha.

Since the summer of the same year, the Seshchinsky underground also kept in touch with the group of Arkady Vinitsky, also an intelligence officer of the “Ten,” that is, the 10th Army, who worked in the area of ​​​​operation of the partisan detachment of Major Konstantin Roshchin, Danchenkov’s neighbor in the Kletnyansky forest and his military friend. In the fall of 1942, Danchennov’s detachment became the 1st Kletnyanskaya partisan brigade, and Roshchin’s detachment became part of the 2nd Kletnyanskaya brigade. The Seshchinsky underground had constant contact with these brigades. It was not interrupted by Kostya’s death - Anya took up the baton. But on December 16, 1942, the punitive operation “Klette-2” (“Burdock-2”) began against the Kletnyansky partisans. Arkady Vinitsky was forced to leave the northern half of the Kletnyansky forests to the southern, and the vital connection for the Seshchinsky underground was interrupted.

But immediately after the blockade, Anya was able to quickly restore the radio bridge. On March 18, she met in the village of Kalinovka with her new commander - senior lieutenant Ivan Petrovich Kosyrev, an experienced military intelligence officer who “inherited” the Seshchin international underground organization from Vinitsky. Anya’s assistants, Lucy Senchilina and Pole Jan Mankowski, were present at the meeting.

Having noticeably strengthened by the spring of '43, our aviation became increasingly interested in the Seshchina airbase, its main, reserve and false airfields, and its air defense. The information obtained by Anya and her friends helped our pilots more accurately bomb the air base and avoid anti-aircraft fire without losses...

In order to glean the necessary information from the conversation of the Nazis, Anya memorized the terminology, which was translated for her by Jan Mankowski, who knew German well: “schwarm” - link, “kette” - also a link, but not for fighters, but for bombers, “staffel” - detachment, "group" - this is easy to remember - group, "geschwader" - squadron, division. The Luftwaffe general is called "commodore"...

The headquarters of the Seshchin airbase was formed in Wiesbaden, in the XII Air Force District - the Czech Wendelin Roblicka found out. At first, the Seshchins base was part of the 2nd Air Fleet of the Luftwaffe under Field Marshal Kesselring (be sure to tell the Poles: Kesselring received the Knight's Cross from Hitler for the bombing of Warsaw and other Polish cities and villages!). The 2nd Air Fleet began the war against the USSR, having more than 1,600 aircraft, Goering ordered it to destroy Moscow from the air!.. For this, Kesselring allocated 300 aircraft and an entire “foreign legion”, consisting of first-class Italian, Spanish and other foreign pilots.

Then, believing that Moscow was finished, Goering transferred Kesselring with the headquarters of the 2nd Fleet to the Mediterranean theater of operations, and reassigned the formations of the 2nd Fleet to the headquarters of the VIII Air Corps and the Moscow Air Force District, which formed the headquarters of the Ost operational group. , commanded first by Field Marshal von Riftthofen, and then, after the Field Marshal was recalled to Kerch and Sevastopol, by Lieutenant General Ritter von Greim. At that time, the 1st aviation squadron (division) of the Luftwaffe was based in Seshche, but from April 1942 it almost did not dare to appear over Moscow.

All this was of great interest to the highest headquarters on the mainland. We managed to find out a lot of valuable things with the help of the Czechs and Poles. How rejoiced Anya was when Wendelin found out that brand new FV-190s, converted to Ju-87 tank destroyers, had arrived at the Seshchinsky airfield - this was at the beginning of forty-three - they were tested by Hitler’s first ace Hans Ulrich Rudel. And this data will be useful there, behind the front! How useful they will be!..

Anya’s father, Afanasy Kalistratovich, just sighed, looking at his daughter washing German linen.

This is how fate plays with a person,” he once told her. “If I hadn’t dragged you to Seshcha with me from Bryansk, it turns out you would never have become an underground member.” I sometimes regret that they offered me a tailoring job here.

“I would find a business for myself in Bryansk,” Anya answered with a smile. - There is probably more underground there than ours, Seshchinsky!

And maybe we shouldn’t have moved to Bryansk,” Kalistratych sighed. - We would sit quietly in our native Polyany near Mosalsk...

“I would have become a partisan there too,” Anya said stubbornly.

Evdokia Fedotievna, the mother, did not contradict her daughter - she knew her character. And her brother, Seryoga, just as stubborn, immediately went to the front. Anya, I guess she’s even more desperate. Just think - she forced the whole family to move back to Sescha from the village of Kokhanovo, where it was much safer.

Oh, Anechka, don’t blow your head off! - the mother sighed more than once.

Every day there is bombing. Sirens are howling, anti-aircraft guns are firing, exploding bombs are roaring... Due to strong and frequent bombings, the water in the wells became cloudy and dirty - so much earth was shaken there, and the German captain ordered Anya and other laundresses to wash the linen several times.

Some inner voice told Anya: “Enough! Save the remnants of the organization while you can, take the people into the forest!” She read about this in the eyes of many of her comrades. But Anya, this twenty-two-year-old girl, who did not know any special difficulties before the war, this shy quiet woman, who during two war years became the combat commander of a large and strong underground organization, whose members spoke different languages, did not flinch, did not give a saving command to leave the battle . Remaining at her underground post until the last hour, she even sent her sister on a deadly mission...

And in this she also followed the example of Kostya Povarov. Kostya also did not spare himself. He also involved the whole family in the fight - father, mother, brother, beloved girl.

And Anya, like Kostya, was capable of taking the most desperate risks for the sake of a Soviet man unknown to her, but her own. So, every hour, every minute, risking the organization, she hid under her bed a Jewish girl who had escaped from the Smolensk ghetto. I hid it for six whole months. She hid it from the concentration camp, from the crematorium. Anya was not destined to have children, but she rightfully said to her underground friends after she finally managed to send this Jewish girl into the forest:

Now Zhenya can live and live! In parting, she called me sister, and I feel like her mother. It was as if I had been carrying it under my heart all these months. It's like I gave her life...

And how she secretly worried when she realized that Ian the Little, the man whom she fell in love with all the ardor of a young heart kindled by first love, loved another, loved Lucy. But besides the feeling of fulfilled duty, this feeling was the only thing that brightened up Anya’s difficult life during many months of underground.

In the May days of 1942, this first feeling blossomed in her heart along with the cherry blossoms. A nightingale sang in a birch grove above a warehouse of German air bombs. Anya met with Ian Malenky to replenish the map of Hitler's air base. She increasingly liked this ardent, fair-haired Pole with the delicate features of an open, bold face, the organizer of an unheard of thing - a strike of Polish forced laborers at Hitler's military airfield!

Anya and Ian were the same age. On May 20, the underground members of the newly organized Russian and Polish groups modestly celebrated Jan's birthday, and on May 23, Anya's birthday. Even this trifling coincidence seemed significant to her then... She then misperceived both Janek’s Polish gallantry and his simply friendly signs of attention. Yes, Ian immediately became a loyal, loyal friend to the end, but he didn’t even think about anything more. The sharp-sighted Anya remained blind for a long time. She deceived herself both when Ian, saving Lucy from being sent to the unknown, invited her to enter into a fictitious marriage with him, and during the wedding of Ian and Lucy. “It’s all make-believe!” - she reassured herself.

And then, when Lyusya whispered to her, as her best friend, that she was expecting a child, Anya followed the advice that she herself gave to the underground women in the first days of the underground:

Lock your heart, girls, and throw the keys away!

And she did everything to make Lucy and Ian happy.

Anya was not mistaken about Yan the Little. When the Gestapo arrested him, she both mourned him and was proud of him. Jan could have gone into the forest to join the partisans, but he did not. He went through severe torture and death to save Lucy, his wife’s family. After all, if he had left, the Gestapo would certainly have tortured Lyusya and her family.

Yan the Little was executed in Anya’s homeland. Anya laid her head down in the homeland of Ian the Little. They fought bravely against a common enemy and were worthy of each other.

Anya achieved her goal - she again became a scout. Having said goodbye to Seshcha, getting to the headquarters of the Western Front, she seemed to breathe again in that rarefied air of imminent danger, the air of battle, which she yearned for at home, in peaceful Seshcha. She arrived at her unit in the village of Yamshchina near Smolensk, when winter still covered the earth like a swan’s wing.

No, Anya did not become a pet swan with clipped wings! Perhaps this is exactly what she thought about when Major Struchkov asked her what reconnaissance pseudonym she wanted to take for herself. Anya already knew that the girls who worked in our intelligence service usually chose the names of birds as pseudonyms.

“Swan,” said Anya.

“Well,” the young major smiled. - A good nickname. Swans are brave birds; they even fight with eagles. They never cheat on each other and live to a ripe old age...

So Anya Morozova became “Swan”. So she caught up with her fighting friends.

Anya arrived at the unit together with Lyusya Senchilina. In Yamshchina she found her former underground member Pasha Bakutina and the former group commander, Senior Lieutenant Kosyrev.

On the occasion of the meeting, Ivan Petrovich Kosyrev arranged a modest banquet. Until late they remembered the big bombing, during which our planes for the first time bombed the Seshchin air base according to an accurate map drawn up by the Seshchin underground fighters, and the battle in Sergeevka, where Danchenkov’s partisans, using intelligence obtained by Wendelin and Jan Malenky, defeated a group of Nazi pilots... So many big events fit into those two years! It seemed like a long, full life had been lived.

Do you remember, Anya, how we got a new type of gas mask for the Center? - Pasha exclaimed. - Do you remember the riddle of the “yellow elephant”?

What kind of animal is this? - asked Kosyrev. - Oh, yes! "Yellow Elephant" - the emblem of the Wehrmacht chemical troops...

“We then noticed in Seshcha,” Anya began to tell, “cars with this emblem and were alarmed - why did Hitler send chemical shells to Seshcha. The mainland instructed us to get a new gas mask...

And we got hold of it, stole it from a drunken non-commissioned officer,” added Lyusya.

The gas mask was stolen by Sasha Barvenkov,” said Anya. “A boy of about fourteen.” We had a good scout, but he soon disappeared without a trace. We transported the gas mask to the partisans, and they sent them by plane to the mainland...

Do you remember, Anya,” Kosyrev spoke again, “how you warned me about the start of the German offensive on the Kursk Bulge, how you sent me the “tiger” passport? Our people were very interested in this new tank...

“And I, girls,” said Pasha, braiding her hair, “I will never forget how you, Anya, and Lyusya once saved Ian the Little.

Pasha immediately regretted what she said. Both Lucy and Anya immediately became gloomy and downcast. The memory of Yan the Little was still too fresh.

Kosyrev, looking over the dimly burning kerosene lamp at Pasha, reproachfully shook his head: why, they say, reopen unhealed wounds. They will not heal soon anyway and will leave a noticeable scar for life.

He himself, Kosyrev, remembered well this absurd incident, which almost ended in the most tragic outcome. It was just a year ago, in March '43. He then replaced Arkady Vinitsky, who before him kept in touch with the Seshchinsky underground. Kosyrev arranged a meeting for Anya in the village of Kalinovka, which was located not far from the restricted area of ​​the Seshchinskaya airbase. Anya took the newlyweds with her to this meeting - Ian Malenky and Lyusya, straightening everyone's documents as if they were heading to Kalinovka for a wedding with relatives. They arrived on a sleigh in Kalinovka a little earlier than the appointed time and immediately ran into three unfamiliar partisans from Danchenkov’s brigade. Then the winter punitive expedition of the Nazis had just ended and the partisans were angry - during the winter they had gone through fire and water, suffered hard times and had already seen enough of the villages under the forest, burned and devastated by the punitive forces.

The partisans immediately grabbed Ian Little as soon as they noticed he was wearing a blue-steel Luftwaffe overcoat and a cap with a cockade and a swastika. Anya and Lyusya tried to explain that Ian was their boyfriend, an underground worker, working for Danchenkov, but the partisans did not want to hear anything. They immediately dragged Ian to the outskirts...

Yan was saved by Anya’s resourcefulness. Jumping into the sleigh, she galloped the horse towards Kosyrev. Anya understood that only Kosyrev could save Ian from execution, but would she have time to call him for help...

The partisans, who had become very battered during the siege, ordered Jan to take off his shoes and undress. Ian took off his overcoat and uniform and sat down to take off his boots...

Anya rushed, whipped the lathered horse with a whip, every minute expecting to hear the sound of a shot behind her.

Ian took off one boot and started on the other...

Anya saw a sleigh in the field quickly approaching her. Kosyrev or not Kosyrev? If not Kosyrev, it will be too late. The shot is about to ring out...

It was Kosyrev. Anya shouted something to him, not remembering herself, immediately turned around and rushed back to Kalinovka. Kosyrev and his boys hurried after her.

They saved Yan the Little at the last minute. The senior lieutenant immediately reprimanded the partisans for attempting lynching.

This is how Kosyrev met Anya Morozova. He immediately appreciated her quick reaction and instant intelligence. The ability to quickly make the only correct and saving decision in a seemingly hopeless situation - isn’t this the most important advantage of an underground leader?

And in Yamshchina, Kosyrev continued to admire Anya. How she has grown, how she has hardened in two years underground! From the most ordinary rural girl, Anya became an experienced leader, the soul, heart and mind of an international underground organization. On the move, in the midst of the struggle, Anya learned the science of conspiracy; without interruption from the struggle, she went through the intelligence academy in practice. In truly creative overcoming of tasks previously unimaginable for Anya, her character matured. She was amazingly able to adopt all the best, the most useful from her comrades - she developed the intelligence outlook of Wendelin Roblicka and the commanding talent of Kostya Povarov, became as passionate a fighter as Jan the Little, as careful and prudent as Jan the Big. And the fire radiating from her big heart illuminated all her friends in the underground and all the affairs of this underground.

The command appreciated the intelligence officer Anya Morozova. In her “personal file” the following entry appeared: “Comrade Morozova has extensive experience working in occupied territory in the past and, due to her business and political qualities, can again be sent behind enemy lines... If she has documents, she will be able to live legally in the territory occupied by the Germans ..."

Anya studied radio engineering. I practiced first on the “buzzer”, then on the portable shortwave radio station “Sever-bis”. From morning until late evening, she crammed Morse code, received and transmitted digital text, memorized the code, spoke with Lyusya - they lived together in a house on North 2nd Street only in German.

Anya didn’t even notice how spring came to the Smolensk land. Before the drops had time to ring and sparkle, the front gardens turned green, and swans flew by at the head of the patrol of migratory birds.

They carry spring on their tails! - said the Smolensk residents, watching with narrowed eyes a sunny-white flock of swans in the bright blue azure.

And Anya remembered her native Polyany again in the spring. Every day, except for days off, she and her village friends from Polyany went to the Novoroschistensk seven-year school. There and back is not a short journey, several kilometers. But this path never tired Anya in the spring. You go to school - the ice crunches under your feet, the field is white and white, and you walk from school - here and there in the sun the hillocks and thawed patches turn black, puddles glisten, streams gurgle, birch buds swell. Every day, there are new discoveries, every hour, the road changes its face, the entire forest side changes around. The names of the villages alone are worth it - Polyany, Novaya Raschist... It was Anya’s bearded ancestors who conquered the land from the pristine forest wilds.

Anya also remembered two military springs in Seshche. The first spring, the spring of forty-two, brought them together, Russian girls and Polish guys. "Now you will play our main trump card!" - Anya said to Lyusa when she completed the task - she met Ian the Little. There was so much excitement and anxiety... And yet it was a wonderful spring. In the grove above the bomb depot a nightingale sang, Anya loved and hoped...

Anya didn’t even notice the second war spring, plunging headlong into the underground suffering. Anya had no time for nightingales when there were arrests all around, and she lived literally in the shadow of the Gestapo building, when she had to devote herself entirely to preparing for new actions on the eve of Operation Citadel.

And now Anya is greeting the third spring of the great war, and again she does not notice how the birch buds smell, she does not hear how the spring waters rustle in the ravine. Number "three": "ti-ti-ti-ta-ta"... What is a "Heaviside layer"?.. What auxiliary verb is conjugated with German intransitive verbs?..

And the village girls sing outside the outskirts. A bird cherry branch looks out the open window. And uninvited thoughts creep into your head, interfering with your studies, confusing verbs and clouding the code. After all, Anya is only twenty-two years old! And she also wants her own happiness. Vague desires languish her chest. Anya lowers the book, looks into the mirror on the wall, straightens the dark blond strand on her forehead. The best years of girlhood fly by, like swans behind the clouds, and the girlhood period is so short...

In mid-July, at the very top of summer, when the chirping of crickets and grasshoppers prevented radio operators from listening to the chirping of Morse code, Anya took her exams. She answered all the instructor’s questions about the basic and wiring diagram of the walkie-talkie, easily and quickly fixed simple malfunctions, and during the decisive practical exam, she transmitted 100 characters of alphabetic text and 90 characters of digital text on a simple key in one minute, received by ear when the signal was audible 3 -4 points for 90 and 85 characters, respectively. It's a long way from the top class, but for a short-term course graduate it's not bad at all.

Another entry appeared in her “personal file”: “She may be allowed to work independently at a radio station like “Sever-bis” behind the front line.”

This is how the Swan gained wings.

Meanwhile, Soviet troops were driving the Wehrmacht out of Belarus and Lithuania, and less and less of our land remained occupied by the enemy, where the “Swan” - reconnaissance radio operator Anya Morozova - could fly.

One evening Major Struchkov knocked on her door. Behind him, a young captain with the Order of the Red Star on a brand new cotton tunic and round glasses with steel frames entered the little room. Quartermaster? Staff officer?

Meet us! - the major smiled. - Captain Winged. Yours, Anya, commander.

Anya fixed her eyes on the unremarkable face of the captain who entered. This is not at all how she imagined her future commander. She pictured him as looking like the partisan brigade commander Danchenkov, in a dashing kubanka, leather jacket and with a Mauser at his side. And here - a neatly hemmed collar, a boyish half-box, short stature and... these glasses... Anya calmed down only a few days later, when she realized after conversations with the captain that he knew his business very well. In addition, she learned that Captain Krylatykh not only fought at the front, not only graduated from military school, but, and this is the most important thing, he had already been on three missions behind enemy lines.

In those days, our reconnaissance groups were returning from the regions of Belarus and Lithuania liberated by the advancing Soviet troops. At the head of one such group, Captain Krylatykh returned to front headquarters. For new, even more difficult missions behind enemy lines, the command began to select the most courageous and intelligent intelligence officers and partisans. And among the first, the choice of the headquarters of the 3rd Belorussian Front fell on Captain Pavel Krylatykh. A native of the Kirov region, a former student of the Sverdlovsk Mining Institute, Captain Pavel Andreevich Krylatykh had extensive experience working behind enemy lines. He was an intelligence officer, so to speak, with a higher education. His group "Chaika", operating in the Minsk region, obtained and passed on to the command a lot of valuable information.

Captain "Jack" - this was Pavel Krylatykh's new pseudonym - understood how important it was to accurately select the composition of a new group. And first of all, his deputy. Together with Major Truchkov, he settled on the candidacy of Belarusian Nikolai Andreevich Shpakov, a brave, persistent, resourceful military intelligence officer who successfully operated in his native Vitebsk region and in the Minsk region. Shpakov voluntarily joined the Red Army from the Moscow Institute of Technology, where he studied brilliantly and showed great promise as a future theorist and technologist.

Ivan Melnikov was chosen as the second deputy. He and his bosom buddies, also Ivans - Ivan Ovcharov and Ivan Tselikov - acted for a long time as military intelligence officers in the Mogilev region. These were strong guys. “We should make nails out of these Ivans!” - paraphrasing the poet Tikhonov, Captain Krylatykh spoke about them with pride later.

The second radio operator of the “Jack” group was an extremely fearless girl radio operator, who also had experience of practical work behind enemy lines, a cheerful, resilient Muscovite Zina Bardysheva.

Of the former partisans, “Jack’s” group included Belarusians Iosif Zvarika, fifteen-year-old Genka Tyshkevich, who was taken by the captain literally at the last minute, and Nathan Ranevsky, a former student of the Leningrad Krupskaya Industrial College, who knew a little German.

Perhaps,” the captain once said to Anya Morozova, “we will place you behind enemy lines.” Therefore, you need to know as much as possible about the area where we will work.

He locked the door and unfolded the roll of cards on the table. Anya’s heart started beating faster... and suddenly it froze.

The captain pointed his index finger somewhere near Koenigsberg.

Yes, Anya, we will be thrown into East Prussia, into the very lair of the beast. Here is the Rominten Forest - a former Hohenzollern reserve. Goering hunts there now. All around is an almost continuous fortress. And here, near Rastenburg, is Hitler’s main headquarters. And Himmler himself is responsible for her protection. - The captain lit a cigarette. - Only volunteers will fly there with me. Decide, Anya!

After a pause, Anya raised her eyes to the captain:

I decided a long time ago. I knew what and where I was going...

At the airfield near Smorgon, Captain Krylatykh’s group was escorted by a staff member. It was already completely dark on the ground, but when the twin-engine Douglas rose to three thousand meters, Anya, clinging to the porthole, saw the dark crimson flame of the sunset far to the west.

The Swan is flying. He flies for the first time in his life. Flies over a winding string of fiery flashes on the black earth. This is the front. Somewhere there, Yan Bolshoi, the former partisan brigade commander Danchenkov, and many of her military friends are fighting. And she, the “Swan,” flies even further, beyond the edge of the mainland, beyond the border of the unknown.

Below is East Prussia. Below is Germany. The war has returned to its prime meridian. From here began the "drang" towards Moscow and Leningrad, from here, like fiery lava from the mouth of a volcano, the columns of the Wehrmacht, the troops of Field Marshal von Leeb, and the tank divisions of General Heppner poured out.

Get ready!

Eight reconnaissance officers and two reconnaissance radio operators line up facing the tail of the aircraft. The halyards are secured to a steel cable overhead. The roar of engines rushes through the open doors.

Let's go!

This jump into the lair of the fascist beast in itself is already a feat.

The whirlwind from the propellers spun and swirled Anya. She fell like a stone. And suddenly she was shaken by a strong jolt - the parachute opened with a sharp bang, like a shot. Anya looked up at the silver-snowy dome illuminated by the moon, and wild, crazy joy made her frozen heart beat. She flew, soared like a bird, not feeling the speed of her fall. In the ensuing silence, the rumble of the Douglas was barely audible. Below were black squares of forest...

Of the ten paratroopers of the "Jack" group, six, including Anya, hung on tall pine trees. Soon all the losers were removed from the trees by their comrades, but their parachutes remained hanging on the branches - the scouts were in a hurry to get away from the landing site as quickly as possible. But the most unpleasant thing was that the fighters could not find a cargo parachute with a bale containing ammunition, spare radio power supplies and a two-week food ration.

The Nazis, alarmed by the landing at Tilsit, from the very first day, as soon as the reconnaissance plane spotted parachutes hanging on the pine trees near the village of Elkhtal - Elkhtal Valley - they organized a pursuit. At the signal "Attention - paratroopers!" The entire huge machine of the Security Police and SS came into action. And when the radio operators of the "Jack" group - Anya Morozova and Zina Bardysheva - went on the air, they were immediately spotted by German "listeners" - special radio eavesdropping units. The direction finders pinpointed exactly which square of the forest the scouts were hiding in, and an hour after the radio session, special SS anti-parachutist teams began a raid in the forest. The “Jack” group had to zigzag, confuse their tracks, mine their path with “anti-personnel” and sprinkle it with gasoline-soaked tobacco to deceive the dogs.

On the third night, at the bridge over the rather wide Parve River, the scouts encountered the Nazis. In this short-lived skirmish, a German bullet stung Captain Pavel Krylatykh, commander of the Jack group, in the very heart. The command of the group was taken by Krylatykh’s first deputy, Nikolai Shpakov. He took the field bag with maps from his dead friend. He handed over “Walter” to Anya, and the bullet-ridden jacket to Genka Tyshkevich.

Put it on! - he said to the youngest member of the group. - The bullet doesn't hit the same place twice.

Nikolai Shpakov commanded the Jack group for almost two months. Anya and Zina transmitted radiogram after radiogram to the Center with information about the fortified area "Ilmenhorst", which in its power surpassed the famous "Siegfried Line", about the transportation of enemy personnel and equipment along the Koenigsberg - Tilsit railway. And all this - in the incredibly difficult conditions of the “eastern outpost” of the Third Reich, in the days when the unprecedented terror unleashed by Himmler raged everywhere after the assassination attempt on Hitler.

Shpakov soon realized that the group would not be able to organize the “Swan” in East Prussia, in this fiefdom of the “Grand Duke” Erich Koch, Gauleiter and SS-Gruppenführer, executioner - Reich Commissioner of Ukraine. No, apparently, “Swan” was destined to remain a wild forest swan!..

It was difficult, very difficult for Anya the underground worker in Seshche, but even more difficult was the work of the intelligence officer at the very walls of the Wolfschanze - Hitler's Wolf's Lair. Fights, combing, raids, ambushes... I was tormented by hunger. Only occasionally was the "Jack" able to take on cargo at night - either the pursuit or the weather interfered. And after each cargo drop, the Gestapo group was again discovered by the Gestapo, and dense chains of SS men were again combing the forest. And again the Dzhekovites went for a breakthrough, fighting back with machine gun fire and “fenki” - that’s what the group called “F-1” grenades.

Two months passed and the group's strength was dwindling. Zvarika was killed, Ranevsky and Tyshkevich went missing during the battle with the ambush. Anya was not destined to find out that Ranevsky, who had injured his leg, and Genka Tyshkevich, who had pestered him, would wait for theirs, hiding in the forests and even on the farm of a German who had lost faith in Hitler’s victory. Unfortunately, without contact with the Center, they could do nothing more to help our command.

It was believed that the second commander of the “Jack” group, Nikolai Shpakov, was also killed in the same night ambush in the forest. But that's not true...

I, her former comrade in the military unit, was able to tell for the first time about Anya Morozova, an active participant and then leader of the Seshchinsky underground, in 1959 on the pages of Komsomolskaya Pravda. Then the story “We call fire upon ourselves!” published as a separate book, the first Soviet serial television film of the same name appeared. Then it was believed that after the liberation of Seschi, Anya Morozova was thrown into Poland. And only in 1966 I was lucky enough to find in the archives documentary evidence of the heroic work of radio operator-reconnaissance operator Anya Morozova with the Jack group in East Prussia before she came to Poland. In 1967, I first spoke about these facts in the documentary story “Swan Song” on the pages of the same Komsomolskaya Pravda. In "Swan Song" I wrote that Nikolai Shpakov was killed in a night ambush...

But the search continues to this day. The archive managers, with whose help and participation this collection was prepared, helped to find in the reports of intelligence officers operating in East Prussia in the fall of 1944, a unique document that made it possible to clarify a number of facts. It turns out that Nikolai Shpakov did not die that night, but was cut off from his group, which he so wonderfully commanded in the most difficult conditions, by the dagger fire of the Nazis who staged a night ambush. But he fell, as they say, from the frying pan into the fire. At first he was incredibly lucky: while looking for the Jack men, he came across a group of Soviet intelligence officers from the headquarters of the neighboring 2nd Belorussian Front in the forest. Like “Jack,” this group suffered heavy, irreparable losses, was starving... One can imagine how the commander suffered and suffered, cut off from his scouts. But even in the new group he was always ahead - such was the scout Shpakov.

Nikolai Shpakov, the hero of the Vitebsk underground and the reconnaissance raid of the "Jack" group, was killed during a raid on the Grossbauer farm - he was hit by a bullet from a German attack aircraft...

When the Jack group was operating in East Prussia, I and my group were in Wartheland, in the Schneidemühl - Posen (now Pila - Poznan) region. The regions of East Prussia and Wartheland are very similar to each other, and I can perfectly imagine the conditions in which Anya lived and worked with her friends from Jack. True, the population density of Wartheland was denser than in East Prussia, and there were fewer forests here, but we had such helpers as the Jackites did not have - Poles, farm laborers, half-slaves, whom the Germans did not have time to deport to the Warsaw General Government . However, Anya later came to the Poles...

After the disappearance of Nikolai Shpakov, the group was headed by Ivan Melnikov, and Anya became his right hand.

During the day, Anya tried not to look at her friends - they were so thin, so haggard. Vanya Ovcharov seemed to have developed old tuberculosis - he was coughing up blood, his face took on a waxy hue.

The Germans called paratroopers “forest ghosts.” The pale and emaciated Jackians in their spotted, yellow-green jackets really looked like forest spirits. Sometimes they had to drink from a hoof print on a forest rut, at a boar watering hole, dotted with the marks of seasoned cleavers, elk, deer...

Once the Center threw out a rifle with a sound silencer to the intelligence officers at their request. Using a “silent gun” that fired special lightweight cartridges with green heads, we managed to kill a roe deer, but the meat quickly spoiled - there was no way to start a fire, and the first attempt to do this almost killed the group. In the East Prussian forests there were many dangerous people for scouts - huntsmen, huntsmen, foresters, loggers. True, there were mostly old people and disabled people, but each of them could instantly contact the Gestapo, police and gendarmes, who would immediately flood the forest. Often, the Nazis called in young cadets from military schools and Hitler Youth detachments, who scoured the forest squares in dangerous packs, to help.

The scouts were greatly annoyed, especially at night, by the endless rows of barbed wire with which the Grossbauer knights surrounded their lands and lands. Apparently, the neighbors here didn’t really like each other... An even bigger problem is the rivers and rivulets. They learned to overcome them by swimming, transporting weapons, ammunition, food, if any, on bales of hay, specially cut reeds, firewood wrapped in a raincoat-tent...

Wherever possible, the Dzhekovites continued to take "tongues". The order to Team Jack clearly stated: "Proactively act." And this, first of all, meant taking “tongues”. Captain Krylatykh managed to take the first “language”. This was the first “language” seen by Anya in the forest. For five years he fought on foreign lands, and was captured on his own! And how different he was from those arrogant, arrogant, arrogant “conquerors” of the eastern lands that Anya saw in Seshche - Colonel Dudu, Lieutenant Colonel Arweiler, SS-Obersturmführer Werner, those who boasted that the Kremlin had been turned into a pile of ruins by bombs, and the Red Army is destroyed.

“Language” babbled something about Karl Marx, about Thälmann, and said not “Heil Hitler”, but “mouth-front”. Anya simply didn’t recognize this fascist!..

After the meeting with the “tongues,” Anya or Zina worked at the key, tapping out radiograms with new important information needed by the command of the 3rd Belorussian Front.

The October days passed, and the Dzhekovites ate only rye grain, rutabaga and carrots from the fields that had not yet been harvested.

Cold autumn rains fell. The camouflage suits were wet, the dirty, half-rotten clothes were soaked through, but there was nowhere to dry. We also celebrated the October holiday from hand to mouth.

But the front just stood still and stood still. There was no cargo of food due to difficult weather.

It would seem that a feeling of complete hopelessness should have broken the spirit of the Dzhekovites and destroyed them. But this did not happen and could not happen. After all, it was the fall of forty-four! After all, Anya and her friends had already survived the battles for Moscow and Stalin, almost the entire Soviet land had already been liberated. The Dzhekovites understood that complete victory was just around the corner.

Not content with her work as a radio operator, Anya went on missions more and more often: after all, the Germans were more willing to open the countless locks of their indestructible oak doors at the sound of a woman’s voice.

And again and again combing, raids, ambushes in the night...

One day the group came across a field airfield beyond the edge of the forest. They sent one Dzhekovets on reconnaissance. He returned with fantastic information:

Fighters "Messerschmitt-111" and "Messerschmitt-112" are standing.

Oh you! I came up with it too! - Anya, who knew the types of Luftwaffe aircraft well, reproached him. - Yes, there are no such planes at all! What will the Center say if we radiate such a linden tree?

She went on her own and soon returned with precise information: there were modernized Messerschmitt-110E aircraft at the airfield.

By the way, on Prussian soil Anya continued to fight the 6th Fleet of the Luftwaffe, which at one time replaced the 2nd Fleet of Field Marshal Kesselring and was commanded by the same 6th Fleet, Field Marshal von Greim. Anya spotted von Greim’s airfield, and the field marshal’s “listeners” invariably detected her and Zinya’s radio. Yes, the struggle continued, and the characters remained largely the same...

Frosts became more and more frequent. Melnikov was on the shore of the Dzhekovites, looking for haystacks for a day in the forest, prepared by German rangers for winter feeding of forest ruminants. By morning, the haystack that hid the Jacks was covered on the outside with thick white frost. Soon, soon the first snow will fall, and then every trace of the scouts will begin to be imprinted on the powder. Tanks painted white - "tigers" and "panthers" - have already appeared on the highways. German soldiers wore white camouflage suits with white hoods over their helmets. But the Center still didn’t send any cargo - the weather was bad!..

Hunger drove Anya to the farm.

Verist huh? Who's there? - the owner, the old Bauer, asked behind the door.

I am a refugee. From Goldap,” Anya answered in German, glancing at her two comrades standing with machine guns on the porch.

We are not allowed to let outsiders in. Go your own way!

I'm going to Gdynia. Sell ​​bread...

To Gdynia? Not Gdynia, but Gottenhafen!

And the old Bauer shot out the window with a shotgun.

Whooper swans fly over the jagged ridge of the spruce forest. They fly from the blue fiords of harsh Scandinavia high above East Prussia, flying to the warm, fertile region of the Mediterranean. Taking off her headphones and packing her walkie-talkie, Anya watches their flight with envy. An hour or two - and they will be in Poland, and Poland is not a stranger, a fraternal land. But one of the swans, the very last one, for some reason is falling further and further behind the flock. He hears trumpet clicks, beats his wings with all his strength, but flies slower and lower...

Winter is just around the corner. What will happen to the group then?

In mid-November, the Center gave the Jack group a new commander, Anatoly Morzhin. The scouts received him in the area of ​​the Rominten Forest, a protected Hohenzollern forest, and immediately moved to a new area of ​​action, to Rastenburg.

Hitler, however, was not even then in the Görlitz Forest near Rastenburg. He flew from headquarters to western headquarters to direct his last major offensive adventure in the Ardennes.

But Hitler's large forces still remained in East Prussia and Poland. Finding out what these forces were was the primary task of the “Jack” group.

Young lieutenant Anatoly Morzhin, who had been in the Kletnyansky forests near Seshcha and in Belarus, looked with longing and sympathy at the Dzhekovtsen - they were struggling with their last strength, not people, but shadows... How much more fighting will they withstand? After all, now he, Morzhin, is responsible for them. There is nothing easier to die in this nonsense, but how to die usefully, and even better, be useful and not die at all!

Morzhin thought deeply and finally decided to ask the command to move the group, which had fought for more than three and a half months in East Prussia, to the south, to Poland.

For the sake of saving the last Dzhekovites, the Center allowed the group to leave the specified area of ​​​​operation. The scouts had to go through the operational rear of almost the entire Army Group Center - in the rear area of ​​the 3rd Panzer Army, 4th and 2nd Field Armies of the Wehrmacht, exactly where the formation of units and formations for the defense of the East Prussian citadel was taking place third reich.

The Center was especially interested in the area of ​​the main headquarters near Rastenburg and the bridgehead fortifications in Masuria.

And following Krylatykh, Shpakov, Melnikov, the fourth commander of the “Jack” group, Anatoly Morzhin, accomplished what seemed impossible.

The path was long and difficult in the region of the Masurian lakes. “Jack” even passed by Rastenburg, under which, in the swampy coniferous thicket of the Görlitz Forest, Hitler’s underground bunker, which looked like a huge reinforced concrete skull, was hidden under a camouflage network.

Only four reached the Polish border - Anya, Zina, Vanya Melnikov and Tolya Morzhin. Vanya Ovcharov died, Vanya Tselikov went missing... When I managed to find him, a tractor driver on the Mogilev state farm, many years after the war, he said that he considered all the Dzhekovites dead.

The brave four crossed the old border of East Prussia on a dark, blizzard night.

It seemed that the main difficulties were behind us. Finally they are in Poland! On the advice of the Poles, who warmly and friendly greeted the Soviet intelligence officers in the villages of Myshinetskaya Pushcha, the four settled not in houses, but in a forest dugout near the village of Veydo. The Poles said that Hitler annexed all the northern regions of Poland to the Reich back in 1939, that the region of Myszyniec Forest became part of the Ciechanów District, connected to East Prussia, that in this district, like the Teutonic dog-knights of old in the Polish borderland, the Gauleiter’s subordinates ruthlessly "Bloody Erich" SS men, gendarmes, policemen. The war waged by Hitler against the Soviet Union prevented the complete eviction of Poles from the northern regions of Poland to the General Government of Warsaw. But all the best lands had already been transferred to the Nazi colonists from the Reich, who turned the Poles into slaves. Gauleiter Koch even took away from the Poles their homeland, their nationality, ordering that in the Ausweiss in the column about nationality they should put: “not available.”

A friend in need is a friend indeed. Jan Mankowski and his comrades - Jan Tyma, Vaclav Messiash, Stefan Gorkiewicz - found friends and brothers-in-arms in the Russian village of Seshcha near Bryansk. Anya Morozova and the Dzhekovites found faithful comrades on Polish soil, very close to the historical field near Grunwald, where the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian army dealt a crushing blow to the dog-knights of the Teutonic Order in the old days.

For the first time in many weeks, the scouts tasted their fill of hot food, and for the first time in almost five months they washed themselves in a bathhouse.

The December blizzard howled in the iron chimney of the dugout, but the frost did not frighten the Dzhekovites.

Anatoly Morzhin was actively establishing reconnaissance. The center asked to focus attention on the Letzen and Mlav fortified areas, which covered the southern and southeastern approaches to the East Prussian citadel. Anya proposed drawing up a detailed map of defensive zones based on conversations with Poles who fled from digging German trenches, and there were many such Poles. She also advised specially sending selected volunteer assistants of the “Jack” group to the most interesting, key areas, especially former “zholners” - soldiers of the Polish Army, sappers who were well versed in various types of fortifications and defensive lines.

It would have been possible to send reliable people from local residents to the German army, but in the villages they said that Hitler’s call for Polish volunteers into the “valiant Great German Wehrmacht” had failed completely. The Germans themselves had to tear off recruitment leaflets from walls, fences and telegraph poles, because on each of them there appeared inscriptions that were offensive to the Nazis, such as “Hitler kaput!”

Finally, in Myshinetskaya Pushcha, the Dzhekovites accepted the cargo from the mainland. But they failed to really expand their work here.

The punishers attacked suddenly. The forest dugout fought like a front-line pillbox. Melnikov and Morzhin covered the girls with machine gun fire and gave them the opportunity to retreat into the dense forest under fire.

One of the German bullets caught up with Zina Bardysheva and seriously wounded her. Zina turned to Anya - they were crawling side by side - and, raising the pistol to her temple, said:

If you can, Anya, tell my mother that I died right!

Anatoly Morzhin and Ivan Melnikov fought desperately. Bleeding, they continued the fight...

Anya was left alone. One of the whole "Jack" group! The fifth month behind enemy lines was ending.

The Poles connected her with the group of Captain Chernykh. This landing group was dropped near Myshinets in November by the headquarters of the 2nd Belorussian Front.

Raids and combing in Myshinetskaya Pushcha continued. On the advice of experienced Polish partisans from the glorious Army of Ludowa, which was represented in the Mazowieckie region by the Partisan Brigade named after the Sons of the Land of Mazovia, Captain Chernykh, with the permission of the Center, decided to temporarily go to the Sierpck povet (county) to take refuge there in the floodplains of the Wkra River. We set out on the road together with a small detachment of lieutenant “Black” (Ignacy Sedlich).

On the way, Anya more than once transmitted radiograms to the Center with information about the Mlawa fortified area, about the Nazi garrisons in Mlawa itself, Ciechanów and Rypin.

The lieutenant told Captain Chernykh and Anya about how a major guard intelligence officer, Major “Gadfly,” had recently tragically died in the Sierptsky district near Bezhun. Anya, of course, could not then know that they were talking about Gennady Bratchikov, her comrade. And so the paths of the scouts, although Bratchikov was already dead, crossed near Bezhunya, in the floodplains near the Vkra River.

The groups of Captain Chernykh and Lieutenant Sedlich stopped for the night in the stodol and hut of the peasant Tadeusz Brzezinski near the village of Nowa Ves, very close to the Myslin farm and the island on the river where Bratchikov died. At night, the mistress of the house gave Anya hot milk to drink - the girl caught a bad cold on the way from Myshinetskaya Pushcha - thaws gave way to frosts, fogs - snowfalls...

The punitive forces attacked the farm at dawn. Led by SS and SD officers, they acted with certainty - they surrounded the farmstead with a tight ring and opened heavy fire. If the partisans had been confused, they would have died every single one. But they returned fire with fire and broke through the thick chain of punitive forces. The captain of Chernykh fell with his face covered in blood...

Anya ran through the leaden snowstorm, clutching her walkie-talkie, her Severok, to her heart like a child. There were a few steps left to the forest, to the floodplains, when an explosive bullet hit my left wrist, right on my watch strap, clicking like a pistol shot. The bullet broke the bone, and the arm hung by the tendons. Anya was picked up by the Poles, some partisan took the radio from her.

Nothing! - Anya tried to joke in the heat of the moment. - A radio operator needs a right hand!..

Behind the peeling, snow-covered aspens, the roofs of the huts of the village of Dzechevo loomed. An unfamiliar elderly Pole peasant ran up to Anya.

Daughter! I'll hide the panenka in my hut! Panenka can rely on me and my children!..

How many do you have? - Anya asked, overcoming the pain.

Three small...

Anya shook her head negatively. Maybe, at that moment, she remembered her three sisters, remembered how she sent Masha to the airfield... Yes, she risked both her sisters and her father and mother, but she did it not for herself, but for the sake of a great cause that was for her , for Anya Morozova, was more than life - her life and the lives of loved ones and relatives...

No! - Anya firmly answered the Pole. - I won't go to you. If the Germans find me there, they will shoot you and your children...

It seemed like explosive bullets were crackling everywhere in the floodplains. The Germans were on their heels.

The partisans suffered heavy losses. They retreated to the floodplains to escape by swimming across the treacherous Vkru River, which does not freeze in winter. They couldn’t take Anya with them - she was already falling off her feet.

“We will hide you,” said one of the partisans, “we will distract the Germans, and then we will come back for you...

Two Poles turned up in the forest, two old Smolokurs. They helped hide Anya behind a swamp in a willow forest...

The partisans left. The tar smokers also left. Anya was left completely alone. And in the distance you could already hear dogs barking - the SS men and gendarmes were walking with the dogs. Scarlet blood stains, Anya’s blood, were clearly visible on the snow. Two bloodhounds walked straight along this bloody trail.

Anya took the strap off the pistol and applied a tight tourniquet over her wrist.

A tall cap with an imperial eagle flashed behind the bushes...

Anya placed two fragmentation grenades in front of her, the last two "fenki".

She fought until the last. Shooting from a Walther, she killed three Nazis and wounded both dogs with the first grenade. This saved the life of the tar farmer Pavel Yankovsky, who was hiding nearby in a swamp and was the only eyewitness to the scout’s last minutes. The Germans found his partner and shot him on the spot.

Give up! - the Germans shouted.

Give up? Never! Swans don't cheat!..

Anya could not reload the Walther with one hand. Then she tore out the ring of the last F-1 grenade with her teeth and pressed the ribbed Fenka to her chest...

Anya lay dead on the street of a Polish village. The SS officer, standing next to the mutilated corpse of the intelligence officer, forced the soldiers to march in front of the dead Anna Morozova. And they walked in front of the Swan, typing a step.

If you are as brave and strong as this Russian girl, the officer shouted to the soldiers, Great Germany will be invincible.

The war was ending. Germany was heading towards inevitable defeat, but he still didn’t understand anything, this SS officer. He did not discern the sources of Anya’s courage and strength, inaccessible to him. I didn’t know that no matter how much the goose cheers up, it won’t be a swan.

More than twenty years after the war, I came to Poland to visit Anya Morozova’s grave in the ancient village of Gradzanowo, Sierpck County, Mazovia Voivodeship. Almost very close - in the same povet, in the town of Bezhun - lie the ashes of Guard Major Gennady Bratchikov.

Two intelligence officers, two Heroes of the Soviet Union, two holders of the Order of the Cross of Grunwald lie almost side by side in the fraternal Polish land. They lay down in this land even when it was trampled by the forged boots of the Wehrmacht. Both gave their lives for victory over the enemy, so that the Soviet Army and the Polish Army would pay with less blood for the liberation of Poland.

In a rural cemetery, under the old dense trees at the entrance, rests a wide marble slab. There is an inscription carved on it in Polish:

ANYA MOROZOVA

SLEEP EASY IN POLISH LAND!

An honor guard of young scouts stood at the grave.

In those days, almost all of Poland watched on TV a film about Anya Morozova and her friends - “We Call Fire on Ourselves!” All the scouts from the village of Gradzanova also watched it. And so the director of this first Soviet serial television film, Sergei Kolosov, and the actress Lyudmila Kasatkina, who so magnificently performed the role of Anya Morozova, came to visit them...

The name of Anya, now immortalized forever, is carved in gold letters on a stone plaque at the entrance to the Grazanova village school. This school was named after Anya Morozova. And every day the school students bring roses and red carnations to the Swan’s grave, which is sacred to them.

And twice a year white flocks fly over it, and swan calls are heard far away. It’s as if swans are blowing a melodious silver horn and calling you to an unknown path, calling you to heroism.

Ovid Gorchakov

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova born on May 23, 1921 in the village of Polyany, Mosalsky district, Kaluga region, in a peasant family. Russian. She lived in the city of Bryansk, then in the village of Seshcha, Dubrovsky district, Bryansk region.

Among the many intelligence heroines of the Second World War, the name of Anna Morozova can be especially highlighted. For a long time it was forgotten, but then it became widely known in our country thanks to the film “Calling Fire on Ourselves,” where her role was brilliantly played by Lyudmila Kasatkina. But few people know that the Seshchinsky underground, which is described in the film, is only a third of her combat biography.

Before the war, at the Seshcha station in the Smolensk region, three hundred kilometers from Moscow, there was an aviation military unit, where a twenty-year-old Anna Afanasyevna, or simply Anya Morozova worked as a modest civilian clerk, having completed 8 years of school and accounting courses.

The day after the start of the war, she reported to her superiors and submitted an application to be sent to the front. “It’s the same front here,” they told her. “You’ll work in the same place.”

But the Germans were getting closer, and one day Anya was invited to the office of the deputy commander of the unit. An unfamiliar middle-aged officer was sitting there. “Anya,” he said, “we know you well. The Nazis will be here soon. Our unit is being evacuated. But someone must stay. The work will be dangerous and difficult. Are you ready for it?”

Of course, the conversation was not so short and not so simple. Anya was given full confidence, and from May 1942 she was left for underground intelligence work.

On the day of evacuation, we had to put on a small performance: Anya ran to headquarters with a suitcase when the last car with women and children had already set off to the east. With a saddened look, she returned home, or rather, to the building of the former kindergarten - their house was bombed. That same evening, German troops entered the village.

The Germans completely restored and expanded the first-class airfield built shortly before the war. The Seshchinskaya airbase became one of Hitler's largest long-range bomber aviation bases, from where aircraft of the Second Luftwaffe Air Fleet, subordinate to Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, carried out raids on Moscow, Gorky, Yaroslavl, Saratov... The airfield had strong air defense and was reliably protected from the ground , all approaches to it were blocked, the area around the base was under a special regime.

At first, Anya’s reconnaissance group included girls who worked mainly in the service sector of the German military unit. The names of these Seshchina girls: Pasha Bakutina, Lyusya Senchilina, Lida Korneeva, Maria Ivanyutich, Varya Kirshina, Anya Polyakova, Tanya Vasilkova, Motya Erokhina. And two more Jewish girls - Vera Molochnikova and Anya Pshestelents, who fled from the Smolensk ghetto, whom Anya hid for six months, and then transported to a partisan detachment and from that time used as messengers. Anya passed on the information the girls obtained to senior police officer Konstantin Povarov, the head of the Seshchinsky underground organization, connected with the partisans and intelligence officers, and through them with the Center.

Unfortunately, the information received through the girls was limited: Russians were not allowed directly to military installations and to headquarters.

But women have one undeniable advantage: where they cannot act themselves, they act through men. The Seshchinsky underground women managed to first charm and then make such men their assistants. True, it must be said that they themselves were looking for connections with the underground. These were young Poles mobilized to work in the German army: two Jans - Tima and Mankovsky, Stefan Garkiewicz, Vaclav Messiash, Czechs - non-commissioned officer Wendelin Roglichka and Gern Hubert and others.

"Anya Morozova and her girls,” Jan Tima recalled many years later, “were the spring and fuse of our whole business.”

Films have been made about Anya, her girlfriends and friends, and many articles and books have been written. I would not like to retell them, but what they did deserves at least a simple listing.

If at first the successes were random - Anya, for example, managed to steal a gas mask of the latest design from the Germans and find out the numbers of units stationed at the airfield - then with the acquisition of new assistants, the work became systematic and constant.

"What should we find out for you?" - Ian asked Tim. “Everything,” Anya answered. “Everything about the airfield, everything about the air base, everything about air and ground defense.”

Soon Anya was given a map with headquarters, barracks, warehouses, workshops, a false airfield, anti-aircraft guns, searchlights, and precise designations of aircraft parking areas with an indication of their number at each parking lot.

The map was sent to the intelligence department of the Western Front headquarters. As a result of the subsequent raid, twenty-two aircraft burned down, twenty were damaged, and three were shot down while trying to take off. The gasoline warehouse burned down. The airfield was out of action for a whole week. And this is in the days of fierce fighting!

The successful bombing was reported in the Sovinformburo report. Since that time, according to the intelligence officers' guidelines, the bombing of the Seshchinskaya airbase was carried out systematically, despite the creation of false airfields, the strengthening of the air defense network, etc. After the death of Kostya Povarov, who was accidentally blown up by a mine, Anya led the Seshchinsky underground.

During the Battle of Stalingrad, a powerful blow was dealt to the base - two and a half thousand air bombs were dropped, several dozen aircraft were disabled. By this time, Anya had her own man at the headquarters of Captain Arweiler, commandant of the Seshchinsky airfield. This man was Wendelin Rogliczka. He was able to obtain information such as flight schedules, data on alternate airfields, and even plans for punitive expeditions against partisans. It was he who informed Anya about the departure of part of the flight personnel of the Seshchinskaya airbase to rest in the village of Sergeevka. The partisans, having carried out a night raid on the "rest house", destroyed about two hundred pilots and technicians.

At the beginning of the summer of 1943, both warring sides were preparing for decisive battles on the Kursk Bulge. Landmarks bathroom Soviet aviation carried out a series of powerful attacks on the Seshchinsky airfield with reconnaissance aircraft. During these destructive bombings, the Germans could hide in bunkers and air-raid shelters, while Anya and her friends, who invited fire on themselves, served as shelter in the wretched cellars of wooden houses.

On May 12, 1943, the Germans were amazed to hear that Russian pilots were talking to each other in French. They would have been even more amazed if they had known that the raid by Soviet bombers and the French Normandie-Niemen squadron covering them was directed by a modest twenty-two-year-old laundress.

Anya’s group not only obtained intelligence data. The underground engaged in sabotage (they put sugar in gasoline, sand in machine guns, stole parachutes and weapons) and sabotage (they attached time bombs to bombs and bomb bays of planes, which exploded in the air, and the planes died “for unknown reasons” an hour to an hour and a half after takeoff ).

On July 3, 1943, underground fighters noticed unusual activity at the airfield. A lot of new equipment and flight personnel arrived. We managed to overhear the pilots talking about how the offensive on the Kursk Bulge would begin on July 5th. The information was promptly transmitted to the Center and became another confirmation of already existing intelligence data, which helped to deliver a preemptive strike against the enemy and played an important role in the outcome of one of the largest operations of the Second World War. During the Battle of Kursk alone, underground fighters from Anya Morozova’s group blew up sixteen planes! The crews died without having time to radio the cause of the explosion. Technical and investigative proceedings have begun. The commander of the Sixth Air Fleet, the famous ace Baron von Richthofen, complained to Berlin, accusing aircraft factories of sabotage.

However, the investigations did not lead to anything - the Seshchinsky underground is one of the few where there was not a single traitor. Jan Mankowski died as a hero, falling into the hands of the Gestapo through his own fault, without betraying anyone. He refused the opportunity to escape, fearing that this would destroy Lyusya Senchilina, who became his wife and was expecting a child. Motya Erokhin also died without betraying anyone. Shortly after that, in front of everyone, three planes on which Jan Tim had placed mines exploded, barely having time to take off. They were supposed to explode an hour after departure, but the departure was delayed. A wave of arrests swept across Seshchi. Jan Tima and Stefan Garkevich were also arrested, but escaped, and Anya transferred them to the partisan detachment. Most of the other underground fighters also managed to escape.

On September 18, 1943, Sescha was liberated. However, for Anya, the fight against fascism did not end there. She became a cadet at the intelligence school of the unit in which Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya and Konstantin Zaslonov once served. After this, her family lost contact with her. And in 1945 they received notice that she was missing.

In reality, the following happened. After completing the radio operator's course, Anya was sent to Poland behind enemy lines as part of a reconnaissance group to reconnoiter the enemy's fortification system. On the night of July 27, 1944, parachute troops landed over East Prussia. It consisted of eight scouts led by Captain Pavel Krylatykh and two female radio operators - Zina Bardysheva and Anya Morozova, "Swan". The group was unlucky; it was dropped into a high forest, and six parachutes remained in the trees, unmasking the landing site.

A few hours after the group landed, Gauleiter Erich Koch of East Prussia was informed that parachutes had been found hanging from trees northeast of Koenigsberg; With the help of dogs, we managed to find the rest, buried, as well as a cargo truck with spare sets of batteries to power the radio and ammunition.

The message about the landing force, which landed at a distance of two or three night marches from Hitler’s Wolfschanze headquarters, greatly excited Erich Koch and all his security services. Moreover, this happened just a week after the failed attempt on Hitler’s life in the same “Wolf’s Lair.” In addition, Erich Koch was the largest landowner, who owned several estates in East Prussia. And the Russians attempted to do all this! Not without reason, Koch was afraid that he too might suffer the fate of Reich Commissioner of Belarus Wilhelm Kube, who was killed by intelligence officers. Therefore, large forces were sent to search for the group.

The Germans began pursuit and in the first short battle they killed the group commander. But on the same day, the scouts unexpectedly reached the strongest line of reserve German long-term fortifications - reinforced concrete pillboxes, gouges, trenches. The line was not guarded by anyone, since the front was far away. Our command knew nothing about her. This was the first success. In addition, the scouts captured two prisoners from the military construction department of Todt, from whom they learned many details about the Ilmenhorst fortification line, stretching from the Lithuanian border in the north to the Masurian swamps in the south. One of the prisoners spoke about bases in the forest prepared for future sabotage groups, supplied with weapons, ammunition and food.

Anya turned out to be irreplaceable in the group: she was the first to rush into the river in search of a ford, then, when the group found itself “surrounded” by a dozen German children from a nearby farm, she took off her uniform, went out to the children in one dress and managed to divert their attention while the rest of the scouts were leaving in the forest. Her knowledge of German came in handy.

A real hunt began for the paratroopers. In order to mobilize the vigilance of the population, the Nazis burned the Kleinberg farm, killed its inhabitants and reported in local newspapers that it was done by Soviet paratroopers. Erich Koch, the executioner and murderer, had nothing to do with such a provocation.

Himmler himself was interested in the results of the operation against the paratroopers, calling repeatedly from Berlin. The raids did not stop day or night. In addition to the police forces, up to two regiments were allocated daily to comb the forests. Mobile groups in cars immediately headed to those places from where radio transmissions detected by the Germans were being made.

During a severe thunderstorm, the scouts came across a post of German signalmen. Through the window it was clear that the orderly was sleeping. “What if I go,” Anya volunteered. “If the German wakes up, I’ll say that there’s a sick woman on the porch, I’ll ask him to help her. If he does that, you’ll grab him, and if not, I’ll shoot him.” And so they did. The German came out, was captured and interrogated. We did not receive any valuable information from him, but he said that everyone had been warned about the landing of paratroopers - both civilians and military units.

In the area of ​​​​the city of Goldap we again reached a fortified line. There they were caught by a German raid. It was impossible to retreat; we had to fight our way through the chain of soldiers. During the battle, we reached a German airfield, from where we miraculously managed to escape and take refuge in the nearby forest. They quickly transmitted the encryption to the Center with the received intelligence data and again walked along the fortified line, plotting it on the map. For the night we returned to the forest, which had already been combed by the Germans.

The next day, we received instructions from the Center to return to the landing area, go to the Koenigsberg-Tilsit road and take control of transportation along it and along the nearest highway. The scouts managed to find a convenient place from which they could see the roads. To transmit radiograms, Anya and Zina made many kilometers of maneuvers. Their stations made contact in the most unexpected places: in the field, near garrisons, on the outskirts of cities, on the shores of the Kurishes Ghaf Bay. During the night, the girls managed to go far, found themselves behind a chain of enemy encirclement and returned back.

From the report of the headquarters of the Third Belorussian Front: “Valuable material is coming from the reconnaissance group “Jack”. Of the sixty-seven radiograms received, forty-seven are informational.”

The group was starving. From the telegrams of the new group commander to the Center in early November 1944: “All members of the group are not people, but shadows... They are so hungry, frozen and chilled in their summer equipment that they do not have the strength to hold machine guns. We ask for permission to leave to Poland, otherwise we would die."

But the group continued to operate, conducted reconnaissance, took languages, sent encryption to the Center. In one of the battles the group was surrounded.

From the radiogram from “Swan”: “Three days ago, the SS men attacked the dugout. “Jay” (Zina) was immediately wounded in the chest. She told me: “If you can, tell mom that I did everything I could. She died well." And she shot herself..."

The survivors escaped the encirclement, but lost each other. Anya wandered through the forest with a walkie-talkie for three days until she came across scouts from Captain Chernykh’s special group.

We met with Polish partisans and carried out several operations together. In one of them, the group was ambushed, captain Chernykh and the rest of the scouts were killed. And again Anya managed to escape. She managed to enter the territory of Poland in Myshenetskaya Pushcha, north of Warsaw. There she still had the opportunity to stay alive, lost in the crowds of refugees and hijacked people. But she decided to keep fighting.

Anya found a Polish partisan detachment, joined it and took part in the battles. In one of them she was wounded. Her left arm was broken. Anya tried to joke: “The radio operator needs one right one.”

The wounded girl was hidden in the forest near the tar farmer Pavel Yasinovsky, but the raid also reached there. The morning of November 11, 1944 was her last. She was surrounded during a raid, she fired back, being wounded several times, and when they wanted to take her prisoner, she blew herself up and her radio with a grenade.

The Poles buried her in a mass grave in the town of Gradzanúwle.

On February 16, 1965, the first domestic television series, “Calling Fire on Ourselves,” began showing on the first television program. After the screening of this film, veterans of the Great Patriotic War and public organizations approached the leadership of the USSR with a proposal to award Anna Morozova the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The order of Lenin
Order of the Red Star
Medal
Order of the Cross of Grunwald, II degree (Poland).

A bust of the Heroine was installed in Victory Park in the city of Mosalsk.
Streets in the cities of Bryansk, Mosalsk, Zhukovka, and the urban village of Dubrovka in the Bryansk region are named after her.
A museum has been created at Moscow school No. 710.

Literature

O. A. Gorchakov, J. Pshimanovsky. Calling fire on ourselves
O. A. Gorchakov. a swan song

Filmography

Calling Ourselves Fire (TV series) (1965)

BORN in the Smolensk region. But it has grown and provided
She died here, in the Bryansk region.
...The Great Patriotic War found Anya Morozo-
wu in Seshche. She performed more than modest duties -
the role of a clerk, and then an accountant.
Soon Anya leaves Seshcha for the rear. Only he’s leaving not-
for a long time. She returned in the winter of '42. Came back
with a task received on the mainland...
Now the girl’s hands are no longer holding a feather, but linen. Anya
works as a laundress for pilots based in Seshche. RU-
ki work for the fascists, mind and heart - for the Motherland,
fallen into trouble. It's a bit difficult alone. The scout is looking for
connection with the partisans. With the help of reliable people
attracts Czechs, Poles, workers into the underground group
at an enemy airfield. Through them it obtains light
information about the airbase, its equipment, organizes sabotage
to blow up aircraft and other enemy equipment.
According to the report! Seshchensky group Soviet aviation
carried out precise bombing attacks on the air base. A
Kletnyansky partisans defeated the enemy garrison and
destroyed up to 200 soldiers and officers from among the pilots
composition.
After the release of Sesha, Anya Morozova studied at
scout school. She met her death far away -
in Poland. The girl blew herself up with a grenade, but the enemy didn't
gave up.
For heroism and courage shown in the fight against enemies
hom, Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was posthumously awarded
title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On the eve of the celebration of the Day of Partisans and Underground Workers in Poland, representatives of the Poland-East Cooperation Society and the Sementkowo commune, led by the deputy of the Society, Zdzislaw Jatsashek, laid flowers and lit lamps at the grave and place of death of our fellow countrywoman, the head of the international underground organization of Hero of the Soviet Union, Anna Morozova.

Morozova Anna Afanasyevna (1921 - 1944), Hero of the Soviet Union (1965).

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was born on May 23, 1921 in the village of Polyany, Mosalsky district, Kaluga region, into a peasant family. She lived in Bryansk, then in the village of Seshcha, Dubrovsky district. After completing the courses, she worked as an accountant.

From May 1942 to September 1943 A.A. Morozova led the underground international Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak organization in the village of Seshcha. She delivered valuable information about the enemy and organized sabotage to blow up aircraft. Based on its data, on June 17, 1942, the partisans defeated the garrison in the village of Sergeevka, destroying 200 flight personnel and 38 vehicles. After the liberation of the region, A. Morozova joined the ranks of the Soviet Army and graduated from the school of radio operators. She was thrown into Polish territory and was in a Soviet-Polish detachment. On December 31, 1944, in a battle near Plock, she was wounded and, in order to avoid being captured, she blew herself up with a grenade.

She was buried in the village of Radzanovo, 12 km. east of Plock (Poland).

The feat of the Seshchinsky underground and A.A. The multi-part television film “Calling Fire on Ourselves” is dedicated to Morozova. Monuments were erected in the city of Mosalsk and the village of Seshcha. Streets in Bryansk, Seshche, Zhukovka, Dubrovka, Mosalsk are named after her.

During the Great Patriotic War, from May 1942 to September 1943, Komsomol member Anna Morozova was the leader of the international Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak underground organization in the village of Seshcha as part of the 1st Kletnyanskaya partisan brigade.
After the liberation of Seschi, Anna Morozova completed radiotelegraph courses, underwent special training, and in July 1944, as part of the sabotage and reconnaissance group “Jack,” she was sent to East Prussia. Operating in difficult conditions, the group suffered heavy losses. There was a real hunt for the paratroopers. The raids did not stop day or night. But the group continued to operate, conducted reconnaissance, took languages, sent encryption to the Center.
Suffering losses, the Jack group crossed into German-occupied Polish territory. Since the end of 1944, Anna Morozova was a member of the joint Soviet-Polish partisan detachment. On December 31, 1944, she was wounded in battle and, in order to avoid being captured, she blew herself up with a grenade. She was buried in the village of Grazanowo-Kostelnoe (Poland).
The exploits of A. Morozova and her comrades are dedicated to the story of O. Gorchakov and J. Pshimanovsky “Calling Fire on Ourselves” (1960), the multi-part television film “Calling Fire on Ourselves” (1965), and the television feature film “Parachutes in the Trees” (1973) .

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova(May 23, 1921 - December 31, 1944) - Hero of the Soviet Union, intelligence officer, leader of an underground organization.

Biography

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was born on May 23, 1921 in the village of Polyany, Mosalsky district, Kaluga region, into a peasant family. Russian.

Lived in the city of Bryansk, then in the village of Seshcha, Dubrovsky district, Bryansk region. She graduated from 8th grade school and accounting courses. She worked in her specialty.

During the Great Patriotic War, from May 1942 to September 1943, Morozova led the underground international Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak organization in the village of Seshcha as part of the 1st Kletnyanskaya Partisan Brigade. She obtained valuable information about the enemy, organized sabotage to blow up planes and disable other military equipment. Having received magnetic mines from the partisan brigade, they mined and blew up twenty aircraft, six railway trains, and two ammunition depots.

Based on its intelligence data, on June 17, 1942, the partisans defeated the garrison of the enemy air base in the village of Sergeevka, destroying 200 flight personnel and 38 vehicles.

In September 1943, having emerged from underground, she joined the Soviet Army. In June 1944 she graduated from radio operator courses. As a fighter of the reconnaissance group "Jack" of the reconnaissance department of the headquarters of the 10th Army, she was thrown into the territory of East Prussia. The well-established warning system and the inability to hide for a long time in cultivated forest plantations led to the death of numerous reconnaissance groups sent to reconnoiter the fortification system.

Suffering losses, the “Jack” group moved to German-occupied Polish territory; from the end of 1944, A. Morozova was in a joint Soviet-Polish partisan detachment. On December 31, 1944, in a battle near the city of Plock, she was wounded and, in order to avoid being captured, she blew herself up with a grenade.

She was buried in the village of Radzanovo, 12 km east of the city of Plock.

On February 16, 1965, the first television program began showing the first Soviet television series (4 episodes) “Calling Fire on Ourselves” directed by Sergei Kolosov based on the work of the same name by Ovid Gorchakov and Janusz Przymanowski with Lyudmila Kasatkina in the title role. The film shows the events around the airfield in Seshche. After the screening of this film, veterans of the Great Patriotic War and public organizations approached the leadership of the USSR with a proposal to award Anna Morozova the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In 1973, based on the documentary book by the fighter of the reconnaissance group “Jack” Ridevsky N.F., the film of the same name “Parachutes in the Trees” was shot, telling about the actions of the group members, including Anna Morozova, in East Prussia.

Awards

• The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded on May 8, 1965 posthumously.
• The order of Lenin
• Order of the Red Star
• Order of the Cross of Grunwald, II degree (Poland).

Memory

• A bust of the Heroine was installed in Victory Park in the city of Mosalsk.
• Streets in the cities of Bryansk, Mosalsk, Zhukovka, and the urban village of Dubrovka in the Bryansk region are named after her.
• A museum has been created at Moscow school No. 710.