"For the Motherland"

To mark the anniversary of the victory in WW II, VK publishes excerpts from the book "The Secret of the Marukhskiy Glacier" by Vladimir Gneushev and Andrei Poputko.

In the evening, lieutenant Okunev's detachment returned. Six scouts
were carrying a seventh on a stretcher. Okunev stepped towards the battery commander's table and saluted.

"Comrade captain.."

"Who?" the commander interrupted. "Who is on the stretcher?"

The scouts parted, and the commander saw Kostyuk and gave a start. He had lost many soldiers in the fire of war and he had been within an inch of death many times himself. But Kostyuk? People said he was not afraid of death, but death was afraid of him. And now he was lying still before the commander.

"Tell me the story", the commander asked.

The detachment went reconnoitring at dawn. It was so silent in the morning forest you could hear the dry leaves falling on the ground.

Okunev had found the secret path of the Germans by 9 a.m. Now they
needed to wait. It was not very long, about 15 minutes. The Germans were coming.

In a second everything was over.

The scouts went to the forest but got lost. They didn't know where they were. Then they encountered a small group of Germans who were camped at the mountain peak. Kostyuk checked the number of Germans. "There are a lot of them there, but we have no other way. We need to get over the peak and we're home". Okunev decided to attack the Germans. After the attack about 15 Germans killed, and Kostyuk, lying in the shelter with wildly spread arms, as if hugging his beloved earth for the last time.

Vladimir Gneushev, Andrei Poputko, "The Secret of the Marukhskiy Glacier"