Biography. The true story of the underground worker Anna Morozova Prototype of Anna Morozova and her associates

Memory

In cinema:

• "Parachutes in the Trees" (1973)
• Stars Above the Sky (2012)

31.12.1944

Morozova Anna Afanasyevna

Hero Soviet Union

Soviet intelligence officer, radio operator

The radio operator of the reconnaissance group "Jack"

Head of an international underground organization

• Anna Morozova was born on May 23, 1921 in the village of Polyany, Mosalsky district, Kaluga province, in the family of a Russian peasant. The parents had five children, the eldest of whom was Anya. Later, the family moved to the city of Bryansk, then to the village of Seshcha, Dubrovsky district, Bryansk region. Anna graduated from eight classes of Seshchino high school and courses in accountants. She worked in her specialty in an aviation military unit based at a local military airfield.

  During the Great Patriotic War On August 9, 1941, the troops of Nazi Germany captured the villages of Dubrovka and Seshcha. After the Nazi occupation, at the Seshchino airfield, where the Soviet 9th Heavy Bomber Aviation Brigade was based before the war, a large airbase of the 2nd Air Fleet of the Air Force of the Third Reich was established, numbering up to three hundred German bombers, which bombed Moscow and other Soviet cities. Soviet intelligence agencies were in dire need of accurate information about this strategically important military facility of enemy aircraft, classified by the Germans. In order to obtain such intelligence data, underground organizations began to be created in the Bryansk region.

  After returning to occupied Seshcha after the Nazi bombing, Anna, left without a home and family, got a job as a laundress at a German military airbase, where she gradually found her pre-war friends and recruited them to work in an underground group organized by her.

  From the spring of 1942 to September 1943, Morozova, under the call sign "Reseda", led an international (Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak) underground organization in the village of Seshcha as part of the 1st Kletnyansky partisan brigade. She obtained valuable information about the enemy's forces, organized sabotage to blow up aircraft and disable other military equipment of the enemy. The command of the 1st Kletnyanskaya partisan brigade later assessed the significance of the Seshchino underground as follows: “By April 1942, the Seshchino group had turned into an international underground, since it included, in addition to Soviet citizens, Poles, Czechs and one Romanian. The underground workers of Seshcha, in addition to the intelligence sent almost daily to the brigade, carried out a great deal of sabotage work. Having received magnetic mines from the brigade, they mined and blew up twenty aircraft, six train trains, and two ammunition depots. " Over time, these figures were refined and increased, other exploits of the Seshchina international underground workers became known.

  On the basis of intelligence data from Anna Morozova and her group, on June 17, 1942, the partisans defeated the garrison of the enemy air base in the village of Sergeevka, destroying two hundred Luftwaffe flight personnel and thirty-eight vehicles.

  After the liberation of the village of Seshcha by the Red Army in September 1943 during the operation to liberate the territory of the Bryansk region from the Nazi invaders, the Seshchino international underground completed its work, and Anna Morozova was summoned to the headquarters of the 10th Army of the USSR Armed Forces to present her with the medal "For Courage" , after which she joined the ranks of the Red Army. In June 1944, she graduated from the courses for radio operators at the intelligence school of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army. As a fighter of the sabotage and reconnaissance group "Jack" of the reconnaissance department of the headquarters of the 10th Army of the USSR Armed Forces, she was abandoned on the territory of East Prussia under the call sign "Swan". A well-established German warning system and the inability to hide for a long time in the cultivated Prussian forest plantations led to the death of numerous Soviet reconnaissance groups, which were thrown in to reconnoitre the system of German fortifications. In particular, the line of the reserve German long-term fortifications "Ilmenhorst", stretching from the Lithuanian border in the north to the Masurian swamps in the south: Tilsit-Ragnit-Gumbinen-Goldap-Angerburg-Nordenburg-Allenburg-Velau.

  Since the end of 1944, Anna Morozova was a member of the united Soviet-Polish partisan detachment. Suffering losses, the "Jack" group crossed into Polish occupied by the Germans. On December 31, 1944, entering the location of Soviet troops, in a battle on the Nowa Wies farm (Semyontkovo commune), the scout was surrounded, seriously wounded - a bullet shattered the wrist of her left hand, fired back to the last cartridge and, in order not to be captured, blew up himself and two SS men approaching her with the last grenade. The place of death of Anna Morozova is located at the edge of the forest between the villages of Sitsyazh and Dzechevo.

  Memory

  In 1959, the former Soviet intelligence officer Ovidiy Gorchakov published an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda, and in 1960 he published the story "Calling fire upon ourselves", written in collaboration with the Polish writer Janusz Pshimanovsky, dedicated to the feat of Anna Morozova and her group.

  In 1963, director Sergei Kolosov created a radio play based on the story. The production, which also involved real participants the events of the war, caused a wide response from the audience, the creators received many letters, after which Kolosov decided to take on the film.

  The premiere screening of the first Soviet television series (4 episodes) "Calling fire on ourselves" directed by Sergei Kolosov with Lyudmila Kasatkina in the title role began on February 18, 1965 on the first program of Central Television. The film shows real events around the military airfield in Sesche. After the all-Union television broadcast of the picture, the veterans of the Great Patriotic War and public organizations turned to the leadership of the USSR with a proposal to confer the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on Anna Morozova.

  In 1973, according to the documentary book of the fighter of the reconnaissance group "Jack" N.F. Ridevsky directed by Joseph Shulman shot the eponymous Soviet television feature film "Parachutes in the Trees", which tells about the actions of the members of the group, including the radio operator Anna Morozova, on the territory of East Prussia.

  • A bust of the heroine was installed in the Victory Park of the city of Mosalsk, Kaluga Region.
  • Streets in the cities of Bryansk and Zhukovka, the urban-type settlement Dubrovka of the Bryansk region, the city of Mosalsk in the Kaluga region are named after her.
  • In Moscow high school No. 710 created a museum.
  • In Kaliningrad, the image of Anna Morozova became the prototype of the sculpture on the memorial monument "Soldiers-scouts" in Victory Park.

  In cinema:

  • "Calling Fire on Ourselves" (1965)
  • "Parachutes in the Trees" (1973)
  • Stars Above the Sky (2012)

The cult Soviet four-part film by director Sergei Kolosov “Calling fire on ourselves” was probably watched by many. This is one of our best war films. The main female role was brilliantly played by Lyudmila Kasatkina. But not everyone knows that the movie heroine had a real prototype - the scout Anya Morozova, a girl who became a legend.

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was born in 1921. When the war broke out, a twenty-year-old girl lived and worked as an accountant in the Bryansk region. In May 1942, she headed the underground international Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak organization in the village of Seshcha as part of the 1st Kletnyansky partisan brigade.
Morozova and her comrades collected valuable intelligence data about the enemy's forces and carried out subversive activities. On the mines laid by the organization of Anna Morozova, from May 1942 to September 1943, two German ammunition depots, twenty aircraft and six train echelons took off. With the help of intelligence obtained by Anya Morozova, on June 17, 1942, the partisans defeated the garrison of the German airbase in the village of Sergeevka, destroyed 200 flight personnel and 38 combat vehicles. In September 1943, the underground workers led by Anna Morozova managed to unite with the regular units of the Soviet Army.

Anya completed courses for radio operators. Considering her underground experience and intelligence ability, in June 1944 the command assigned the girl to the Jack reconnaissance group. As part of this group, Anna Morozova was abandoned in East Prussia. From there, Jack's fighters crossed into German-occupied Polish territory. Since the end of 1944, Morozova fought in the united Soviet-Polish partisan detachment. On December 31, 1944, the Jack squadron fought the Germans on the Nova Ves farm. Anya Morozova was wounded and, in order not to fall into the hands of the Germans alive, blew herself up with a grenade. The feat of the Soviet intelligence officer became known after the war, when in 1959 the former intelligence officer Ovidiy Gorchakov published an essay about Anna Morozova in Komsomolskaya Pravda. It was on the basis of this essay that the script of the film "Calling Fire on Ourselves" was written. In 1965, after watching this film, war veterans appealed to the country's leadership with a proposal to award Anna Morozova the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously, which was done on May 8, 1965.

Morozova, Anna Afanasyevna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Afanasyevna Morozova (May 23, 1921, village Polyany, Mosalsky district, Kaluga province - December 31, 1944, Plock) - Hero of the Soviet Union, intelligence officer, head of an underground organization.

The purpose of this article is to find out how courageous act Soviet intelligence officer ANI MOROZOVA in her FULL NAME code.

Watch preliminarily "Logicology about the fate of man".

Consider the tables of the FULL NAME code. \ If your screen has an offset of numbers and letters, adjust the image scale \.

13 28 45 60 69 84 87 88 89 103 117 118 119 140 141 155 156 174 203 209 212 226 227
M O R O Z O V A A N N A F A N A S E V N A
227 214 199 182 167 158 143 140 139 138 124 110 109 108 87 86 72 71 53 24 18 15 1

1 15 29 30 31 52 53 67 68 86 115 121 124 138 139 152 167 184 199 208 223 226 227
A N N A A F A N A S E V N A M O R O Z O V A
227 226 212 198 197 196 175 174 160 159 141 112 106 103 89 88 75 60 43 28 19 4 1

ANNA AFANASIEVNA MOROZOVA = 227 = NON-EXIT POSITION.

M (gnovenn) O R (scientific grenade) O (d) (c) ZO (r) VA (l) A (self) + (explosion) AH (a) (gra) HA (t) A + (catastro) FA + US (dead) b (killing) E (t) B (exploding) (gra) HA (you)

227 = M, O R, O, ZO, VA, +, AH, HA, A +, FA + US, L, E, B, HA ,.

19 36 46 51 74 75 94 123 139 145 162 165 180 186 191 197 208 209 211 228 260
THIRTY FIRST OF DECEMBER
260 241 224 214 209 186 185 166 137 121 115 98 95 80 74 69 63 52 51 49 32

In-depth decryption offers the following option, in which all columns match:

TR (avma chest) I (ser) DTSA + (death) Tb + P (ovr) E (awaited) (vz) P (s) VO (m) (s) E (r) D (c) E + KA ( catastrophe) + B (big) (blood) OC

260 = TR, I, DTSA +, Tb + P, E, P, VO, E, D, E + KA, + B, RYa.

The code for the number of full YEARS OF LIFE: 86-TWENTY + 46-THREE = 132 = DEPARTURE.

227 = 132-TWENTY THREE; DEPARTURE + 95-FROM EXPLOSION.

Since there are no numbers related to the sentence "TWENTY THREE" in the FULL NAME code tables, we take the second option:

It is the TWENTY-FOURTH year:

5 8 9 14 37 38 57 86 110 116 135 138 145 162 181 209 219
TWENTY-FOURTH
219 214 211 210 205 182 181 162 133 109 103 84 81 74 57 38 10

219 = DEATH APPEARING.

227 = 219-TWENTY-FOUR + 8-TW (twenty ...)

219 - 8 = 211 = THIRTY-FIRST DECEMBER (row).

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. She graduated from 8 classes, accounting courses. She worked in her specialty. During the Great Patriotic War from May 1942 to September 1943, Komsomol member Anna Morozova was the head of the underground international Soviet-Polish-Czechoslovak organization in the village of Seshcha as part of the 1st Kletnyansky partisan brigade. Got valuable information about the enemy, organized sabotage to blow up planes and disable other military equipment. On the basis of her 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 aircrew and 38 vehicles. In September 1943, coming out of the underground, she joined the Red Army. In June 1944 she graduated from the courses for radio operators. As a soldier of the reconnaissance group of the intelligence department of the headquarters of the 10th army, she was abandoned on the territory of Poland. From the end of 1944 she was in the united Soviet-Polish partisan detachment. December 31, 1944 in a battle near the city of Plock A.A. Morozova was wounded and, in order not to be captured, blew herself up with a grenade. Buried in locality Radzanovo, 12 kilometers away east of the city Plock of the Republic of Poland. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 8, 1965, Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the exemplary performance of combat missions of the command and for her courage and heroism in battles against the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War. She was awarded the Order of Lenin, a medal, and a foreign order. A bust of the Heroine was installed in the Victory Park of the city of Mosalsk, Kaluga Region. A monument to the heroes of the international underground with a bust of a girl is erected in the village of Seshcha. The books "Swan Song", "Calling Fire on Ourselves" (the story of O. Gorchakov and Y. Pshimanovsky) and the TV series of the same name, filmed in 1963-64 by director S. Kolosov, are dedicated to her feat. The streets in the cities of Bryansk, Zhukovka, the urban-type settlement Dubrovka of 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 with the Grunwald Cross.

06/27/2010 passed solemn ceremony the unveiling of the monument at a small cemetery in the Polish village of Radzanovo was timed to coincide with the Day of Partisans and Underground Fighters. A delegation from the Bryansk region headed by State Duma deputy Viktor Malashenko arrived in Poland to take part in this event. "Taking care of Anna Morozova's memory as an example, we honor all patriots." "We want to show our peoples that politicians come and go, and the good relations that exist between ordinary people have been and will remain. This friendship, forged in the joint struggle against the Nazi invaders, will not be taken away by anyone," Malashenko said. The initiative to honor her memory was made by the administration of the Bryansk region - the homeland of the intelligence officer. She was supported by local residents. Now the burial place of the scout is decorated with a granite slab with a photograph and a commemorative inscription in Russian and Polish.

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

During the occupation of Seshcha, Anya received Active participation in the creation of an international underground. Anya Morozova's group obtained information about the deployment of enemy units in Seshcha, and drew up a detailed plan of the fascist air base. As a result, Soviet aviation inflicted a number of precise strikes on the airfield. On the basis of Morozova's intelligence, the partisans destroyed a holiday home for German pilots in the village of Sergeevka. More than 200 enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed, 38 buses and cars were burned. Under her leadership, in 1943, underground workers carried magnetic mines into the airfield. More than once, Anya warned the partisans about the punitive expeditions preparing against them.

After the liberation of Seshcha by Soviet troops, Anya Morozova, as part of a reconnaissance group, was thrown into the deep rear of the enemy.

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

By a 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 in the skies over the black ashes of burned villages, over the dead stubble of compressed fields and over forests painted with the fiery colors of October. In the slanting rays of the morning sun rising beyond the Desna, they seemed white-hot firebirds, beautiful and unattainable.

In the first and second military autumn, while living in Seshche, occupied by the enemy, Anya did not notice the passage of the swans. Either in those days she more often looked into 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, in this first October after the liberation, Anya again saw off the flocks of birds flying to the south with a long gaze, and, as it happened in childhood, when she lived in the forest Kaluga side, in the village of Polyany near the ancient town of Mosalsky, she wondered about what awaited 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. Friends, seeing a flock of swans, ran out of the outskirts to see off swift-winged birds, and she, Anya, the smallest of all, lagged behind and fell, bruising her knees, and cried, because her friends, having fled after wonderful firebirds in a clear field and a flaming oak forest in the distance , threw her, leaving her alone.

On winter evenings, when an evil blizzard hummed in the chimney and a ten-line lamp blinked fearfully, grandmother, having put 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 a city school, she longed for her native village, for songs at girls' gatherings, for dewy meadows and red snowstorms in a flown birch grove, on sleds, for a wreath of cornflowers, which floated away along the quiet river, and along the swans, along the farewell flaps of their sunny-white strong wings. At such moments, Anya was seized with a vague sadness, an unclear feeling of loneliness and abandonment pressed against her chest.

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

Not long after that day, the happiest in Anya's life, when the first "thirty-fours" burst into the burning Sescha, into the air town destroyed by the Germans, behind which an airfield with a blown-up runway stretched. It was the time of the happiest meetings and the saddest partings.

They met again, the closest and dearest people in the world, friends in the underground, Czech Wendelin, Poles Jan Bolshoy and Vacek Messias, partisan brigade commander Danchenkov and intelligence chief "Uncle Kolya", underground workers Lucy Senchilina, Pasha Bakutina and she, Anya, the leader of the international underground at the 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 Ahrweiler, with SS-Obersturmführer Werner agents, 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 with victory, were full of the brightest hopes, talked about the imminent defeat of the enemy and called her, Anya, their commander with them.

Where to me! - Anya then waved her hand. - The house burned down, there is nothing to eat, dad goes to the army, mom is sick, sisters are hungry, like grumbles ...

And they left, Anya's brothers, went to fight.

Until then, Panna Anya!

Be good, 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 did not work for the Germans; now she will never have to wash German linen.

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

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 ever after in a quiet and safe pond, among snails and frogs. But at the sight of a flock of its free fellows flying over the pond, at the sound of a trumpet cry 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 the storm, nor the hurricanes, nor the fierce eagles, nor the hunting canister scare the swan. But his efforts are in vain. The flock flies away, the proud neck creeps in exhaustion and the goggle-eyed frogs croak mockingly in the pond ...

Increasingly, typing on an old angular "Underwood" some order for the organization that rebuilds the airbase, Anya freezes over a 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 Erokhina ... And the faces of those who survived and went back to war.

- "Wait for me, and I'll be back ..." - a song flows from the loudspeaker.

Before it seemed to Ana that she had learned to wait in that first military autumn. She was told "wait" and she waited. I waited when the Germans from the Sonderkommando drove the Dubrovsk Jews into the old smithy, doused them with gasoline, set them on fire and, tearing their bellies, playing the harmonica, watched the "totentants" - "dance of death" - people who burned to death perform. She waited for the Heinkels to take off from the airfield, roaring harshly, and flew east with bombs to Moscow. I waited later, when Kostya Povarov came with a white bandage from a policeman, and they started their secret war against the invaders, and the clerks spat after Povarova and her.

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

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

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

But Kostya did not wait, although he lived only in anticipation.

Kostya! - Anya persuaded the first head of the Seshchino underground organization. - Well, let our underground workers, the most reliable of our comrades, say about you, so that they know what kind of policeman you are!

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

This was one of the first lessons taught by Bones to his faithful assistant. And how much he taught her! If it were not for the Kostin school, Anya would never have been able to head the underground organization and lead all three groups: Soviet, Polish and Czechoslovak, and they would never have been able to inflict such heavy damage on the enemy, directing Soviet pilots to the airbase, mining Nazi planes at the airport ...

It was Kostya who taught her to find people among the seshchins who were morally ready for the heroic deed, the difficult deed of the underground. Kostya involved Anya and many of his other compatriots in the struggle. And he was not mistaken in any of those on whom his choice fell. And Anya never made a mistake in the people she trusted with everything - the fate of the organization, the life of its members, the life of her whole family and her own life.

Kostya poured strength into her heart, armed Anya with his faith in victory. It was as if he was leading Anya, taking hold of her still unsure, weak hand with his strong, firm male hand, leading her through all the dangers. But he was aware that playing double role, he seemed to be balancing on the edge of a knife, and this is unlikely to last long. It was necessary to teach Anya independence, so that she could balance on the edge of a knife without assistance. And Kostya did it wisely and prudently, giving Anya more and more freedom of action, encouraging her every independent decision, every reasonable initiative. He did this with the 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 in a hurry to 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. Seshchintsy spat and grumbled: "A dog's death!" And Anya's heart was breaking from unbearable pain. It seemed to her that the world was crumbling around, that everything was lost, that no one could replace Kostya as the leader of the Seshchino underground, which stood on the threshold of its most difficult and important affairs. But Kostya had already managed to teach her to fly, and Anya, even after his death, felt his support, his firm man's hand.

Anya came to Kostina's grave near the village of Strukovka, where a fiery tornado that burst out of the ground more than a year ago cut the hero's life. The October leaf-blowing wind ruffled the last leaves of the cemetery birches. The donkey is a grave mound, a lopsided column with a half-erased inscription made in ink pencil. Anya put under the post a bunch of belated autumn flowers that she came across on the way from Sescha.

And the swans, flock after flock, all flew south. We flew over the Kletnyansky forest, which was deserted after the departure of the partisans, over the winding Oak Urems, over the beautiful Desna, which also carries its waters to the south, to the Chernigov and Kiev 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 the mine planted by Jan Little in 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, where her friends had gone ...

Anya firmly knew what she needed to do in order to regain wings. First you need to arrange a family in a new apartment, then wait until my mother recovers, save some money and get my father's first transfer from the army, stock up on potatoes and firewood for the winter ... Whatever she gets paid in the army, she will, of course, send home ...

She knew that her mother would cry, persuade. Well, why, they say, do you not live at home now that the German has been driven away! Did you sit with folded arms? Have you risked your life a little? Did you do little for the Motherland? Mom will beg: "Have pity, Anya, sisters! Mother have pity! You are stone, insensitive! .."

Anya heard such words on the day when she first sent Masha to reconnaissance at the airfield. Anya loved her little sister, and how she loved her too! But then all her assistants at the airfield were seized by the Gestapo and there was only one hope that the Nazis would not pay attention to the girl, still a child. This decision did not come easily to Anya, but the Center needed information at all costs, at any cost.

In those last days before her release, 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. Anya Antoshenkona was thrown into the sheepfold by the Nazis to be eaten by cannibalistic dogs. The arrested Jan Little was also threatened with certain death, and his Polish friends also ended up in the Gestapo. Czech Wendelin got into a penal company - "the death company". In those dark days, the little brother and sister of Lucy Senchilina, Edik and Emma, ​​accidentally blew up on the "magnet" of the underground. The wounded Emma remained to live, and Edik died, because Hitler's doctors, monsters in white coats, refused to give him blood. And Anya read a mute reproach in the eyes not only of Edik's mother, but also in Lucy's eyes that were swollen with tears: this is your handiwork, it was you who arranged the transfer of mines from the forest to the airfield.

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

Anya now eagerly read everything that she could get in Sesche about the underground workers, about the partisans — the few books, essays and articles in newspapers and magazines at that time. In one essay about the glorious French underground, it was said that, according to the French Resistance fighters, the average life expectancy of an underground worker is two years in the underground. So, in Sesh at the airbase, Anya's two years of struggle were a lifetime.

Anya herself did not notice how she became a military intelligence officer. Transferring information about the airbase to Kostya Povarov, she did not know that he was passing it on to "Uncle Vasya", Senior Lieutenant Vasily Aliseichik, who was acting 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 nineteen-year-old radio operator Muscovite Sergei Shkolnikov transmitted this information by 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 Aliseichik all winter and had lost her when he fell ill with typhus - it was in the June 19 blockade of 1942 - and was sent with a radio operator to the front. It was then that the connection with military intelligence was interrupted. But not for long...

In the same June, from the village of Pavlinka, an exciting news reached the partisans of Danchenkov's detachment: at night a landing was thrown into the forest there! Soon Danchenkov met with the commander of the landing group, a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant and a dozen fighters from military unit No. 9903 at the headquarters of the Western Front, a unit glorified by Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. This lieutenant was a military school cadet when the war began. And already on June 23, 1941, he went to the rear of the enemy with an assignment from military unit No. 9903, and then completed several more assignments. 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 radio operator and a radio operator here.

At first, the information collected by Kostya Povarov, Anya and her friends went behind the front on the lieutenant's radio, then a new radio operator, Kolya Baburin, tapped them on the key. By that time, the former contacts of Vasily Aliseichin, Zina Antipenkova and Shura Chernov, became Danchenkov's scouts and renewed communication with Seshcha.

Since the summer of the same year, the Seshchin underground kept in touch with the group of Arkady Vinitsky, also a scout 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 fighting friend. In the fall of 1942, Danchennov's detachment became the 1st Kletnyansky partisan brigade, and Roshchin's detachment entered the 2nd Kletnyansky brigade. With these brigades, the connection of the Seshchino underground was constant. The death of Kostya did not interrupt her - Anya took over 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 for the southern, and the connection, vital for the Seshchino 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 Seshchina international underground organization from Vinitsky. The meeting was attended by Anya's assistants - Lucy Senchilina and Pole Jan Mankovsky.

Visibly stronger by the spring of 1943, our aviation became more and more interested in the Seshchino airbase, its main, reserve and false airfields, its air defense... The information obtained by Anya and her friends helped our pilots to more accurately bomb the air base and avoid anti-aircraft fire without losses ...

In order to draw the necessary information from the conversation of the Nazis, Anya memorized the terminology by heart, which was translated for her by a well-known German Jan Mankovsky: "Schwarm" is a link, "kette" is also a link, but not for fighters, but for bombers, "shtaffel" is a detachment, a "group" is easy to remember - a group, "geshwader" is a squadron, a division. The general of the Luftwaffe is called "Commodore" ...

The headquarters of the Seshchino airbase was formed in Wiesbaden, in the XII Air Force District - Czech Wendelin Roblichka found out this. At first, the Seszczyn base was part of the 2nd Luftwaffe Air Fleet of Field Marshal Kesselring (be sure to hand it over to 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 a war against the USSR, having more than 1600 aircraft, Goering ordered him to destroy Moscow from the air! .. For this Kesselring allocated 300 aircraft and a whole " foreign Legion"consisted of first-class Italian, Spanish and other foreign pilots.

Then, considering that Moscow was finished, Goering transferred Kesselring with the headquarters of the 2nd Fleet to the Mediterranean theater of operations, and reassigned the 2nd Fleet formations to the headquarters of the VIII Air Corps and the Moscow Air Force District, which formed the headquarters of the Ost task force. commanded first by Field Marshal von Rifthofen, and then, after the field marshal was recalled to Kerch and Sevastopol, by Lieutenant General Ritter von Greim. At this time, the 1st Luftwaffe Aviation Squadron (Division) was based in Sesche, 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 Czechs and Poles. How happy Anya was when Wendelin found out that at the beginning of 1943, brand new FV-190s, converted for tank destroyers Ju-87, had arrived at the Seshchino airfield - they were tested by Hitler's first ace, Hans Ulrich Rudel. And this data will be useful there, behind the front! How useful! ..

Anya's father, Afanasy Kalistratovich, only sighed, looking at his daughter, who was washing German linen.

This is how fate plays with a person, ”he once told her. - If I didn’t drag you to Seschu with me from Bryansk, it would never turn out that you would become an underground worker. I sometimes regret that they offered me a job here in the tailoring department.

I would have found a business for myself in Bryansk, - Anya answered with a smile. - There is probably more underground 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, ”Anya said stubbornly.

Evdokia Fedot'evna, mother, did not contradict her daughter - she knew her character. And her brother, Seryoga, just as stubborn, went straight to the front. Anka, come on, even more desperate. Just think - the whole family was forced 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, the bombing. Sirens are howling, anti-aircraft guns are firing, exploding bombs are roaring ... Because of the strong and frequent bombings, the water in the wells became muddy, dirty - so much earth was shaken there, and the German captenarmus ordered Anya and other washerwomen to wash the clothes several times.

An inner voice said to Anya: "Enough! Save, while you can, the remnants of the organization, lead 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 one, who became the military commander of a large and strong underground organization during the two war years, whose members spoke in different languages, did not flinch, did not give a saving command to leave the battle. Remaining in her underground post until the last hour, she even sent her sister to a deadly business ...

And in this she also followed the example of Kostya Povarov. Kostya also did not feel sorry for himself. He also involved the whole family in the struggle - father, mother, brother, girlfriend.

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

Now Zhenya live and live! At parting, she called me sister, and I feel like her mother. As if all these months I wore it under my heart. As if I gave her life ...

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

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

Anya and Yan were the same age. On May 20th, the underground members of the newly organized Russian and Polish groups modestly celebrated Jan's birthday, and on May 23rd, 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 faithful, to the end true friend, but he did not think about more. Vigilant Anya remained blind for a long time. She deceived herself both when Yan, saving Lucy from being sent to the non-farm, invited her to enter into a fictitious marriage with him, and during the wedding of Yan and Lucy. "It's all for fun!" she soothed herself.

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

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

And she did everything to make Lucy and Yang happy.

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

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

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

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

Swan, - said Anya.

Well, - the young major smiled. - Good pseudonym. Swans are brave birds, they even fight 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 came to the unit together with Lyusya Senchilina. In Yamshchina, she found her former underground worker Pasha Bakutina and the former commander of the group, Senior Lieutenant Kosyrev.

On the occasion of the meeting, Ivan Petrovich Kosyrev held a modest banquet. Late then they recalled the big bombing, during which our planes first bombed the Seshchino airbase according to an accurate map drawn up by the Seshchino underground workers, and the battle in Sergeevka, where Danchenkov's partisans, using intelligence obtained by Wendelin and Yan Malenky, defeated a group of Hitler's pilots ... So many big events fit into those two years! It seemed like a long, full-blooded 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 beast is this? - asked Kosyrev. - Oh, yes! "Yellow Elephant" - the emblem of the Wehrmacht chemical troops ...

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

And we got it, stole it from a drunken sergeant, - added Lucy.

The gas mask was stolen by Sasha Barvenkov, "Anya said." A boy of about fourteen. We had a good scout, but soon then he disappeared without a trace. We sent the gas mask to the partisans, and those - 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? Ours were very interested in this new tank ...

And I, girls, - Pasha said, braiding a braid, - I will never forget how you, Anya, together with Lyusya once saved Yan Little.

Pasha immediately regretted what she had said. Both Lucy and Anya immediately grew gloomy, drooped. The memory of Yana Little was still too fresh.

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

He himself, Kosyrev, remembered well this ridiculous incident, which almost ended in the most tragic outcome. It was only a year ago, in March 1943. He then replaced Arkady Vinitsky, who before him had kept in touch with the Seshchina underground. Kosyrev made an appointment for Anya in the village of Kalinovka, which lay not far from the restricted area of ​​the Seshchino air base. For this meeting, Anya took the newlyweds with her - Yana Little and Lyusya, straightening all the documents, as if they were going to Kalinovka for a wedding to their relatives. They arrived in Kalinovka on a sleigh 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 - over the winter they went through fire and water, had endured hard times and had already managed to see enough of the under forest villages, burned down and ravaged by the punishers.

The partisans immediately seized Jan Little, as soon as they noticed him wearing a blue steel Luftwaffe overcoat and a cap with a cockade and a swastika. Anya and Lyusya tried to explain that Yan was his own boyfriend, an underground worker, who worked for Danchenkov, but the partisans did not want to hear anything. They immediately dragged Jan to the outskirts ...

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

The partisans, badly frayed during the blockade, ordered Jan to take off his shoes and undress. Jan took off his greatcoat and uniform, 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 back.

Ian took off one boot, began to work on the other ...

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

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

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

So Kosyrev met Anya Morozova. He immediately appreciated her quick reaction, instant ingenuity. The ability to quickly make the only correct and salvific decision in a seemingly hopeless situation - isn't this the most important advantage of the leader of the underground?

And in Yamshchina Kosyrev continued to admire Anya. How she grew up, how she hardened in two years underground! From the most ordinary rural girl, Anya became an experienced leader, soul, heart and mind of an international underground organization. On the way, in the midst of the struggle, Anya comprehended the science of conspiracy, without interrupting the struggle, in practice she went through the intelligence academy. Her character matured in truly creative overcoming of previously unthinkable tasks for Anya. She was amazingly able to adopt all the best, the most useful from her comrades-in-arms - she developed the intelligence outlook of Vendelin Roblechka and the commanding talent of Kostya Povarov, became the same passionate fighter like Yan Little, just as cautious and prudent as Yan Bolshoi. And the fire emitted by her big heart illuminated all her friends in the underground and all the affairs of this underground.

The command appreciated the scout Anya Morozova. The following entry appeared in her "personal file": "Comrade Morozova in the past has extensive experience of working in the occupied territory and, due to his business and political qualities, can again be sent to the rear of the enemy ... ... "

Anya studied radio business. She practiced first on the "buzzer", then on the portable shortwave radio station "Sever-bis". From morning until late at night, she crammed Morse code, received and transmitted digital text, memorized the code, talked to Lyusya - they lived together in a house on 2nd Severnaya Street only in German.

Anya did not even notice how spring came to the Smolensk land. Before the drops had time to ring and sparkle, the front gardens turned green, and now swans flew past in the head patrol of migratory birds.

Spring is on their tails! - Said the residents of Smolensk, watching with their narrowed eyes a flock of swans, sun-white in bright blue azure.

And Anya remembered her native Glades again in the spring. Every day, except weekends, she went with her village girlfriends from Polyany to the seven-year Novorosschistensk school. There and back - the path is not short, several kilometers. But this path never tired Anya in the spring. You go to school - ice crunches under your feet, white-white in the field, and from school you go - here and there in the sun hillocks and thawed patches turn black, puddles glisten, rivulets murmur, birch buds swell. Every day, new discoveries, every hour, the road changes its face, the whole forest side changes around. The names of the villages alone are worth something - Polyany, Novaya Roschist ... It was Anya's bearded ancestors who conquered the land from the pristine forest jungle.

I remembered Anya and two military springs in Seshche. The first spring, the spring of 1942, brought them together, Russian girls and Polish guys. "Now you will play our trump card!" - Anya said to Luce when she completed the task - she met Yan Little. How many worries and worries were experienced ... And yet it was a wonderful spring. In the grove above the air bombs warehouse, a nightingale was singing, Anya loved and hoped ...

Anya did not even notice the second military spring, plunging headlong into an underground harvest. Anya was not up to the 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 for the third spring great war meets Anya, and again she does not notice how the buds of birches smell, does not hear how the spring waters are rustling in the ravine. The number "three": "ti-ti-ti-ta-ta" ... What is a "Heaviside layer"? .. With what auxiliary verb are German intransitive verbs conjugated? ..

And the village girls are singing outside the outskirts. A branch of bird cherry is looking through the open window. And uninvited thoughts creep into my head, interfering with 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 torment her bosom. Anya puts down 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 clouds, and the girl's term is so short ...

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

Another entry appeared in her "personal file": "Can be admitted to independent work at a radio station of the "Sever-bis" type behind the front line.

This is how the Swan gained wings.

Meanwhile Soviet troops drove the Wehrmacht from Belarus and Lithuania, and less and less remained occupied by the enemy of our land, where the "Swan" - radio operator-intelligence officer Anya Morozova - could fly.

One evening Major Struchkov knocked on her door. Behind him, a young captain with the Order of the Red Star, wearing a brand new cotton tunic and round steel-rimmed glasses, entered the furnace. Quartermaster? The headquarters officer?

Meet! the major smiled. “Captain of the Winged Ones. Yours, Anya, commander.

Anya glared at the unremarkable face of the captain who entered. This was not at all how she imagined her future commander. He portrayed her as similar to the partisan brigade commander Danchenkov, in a dashing Kubanka, leather jacket and with a Mauser on 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 knows 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 most importantly, 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 also returned to the front headquarters. For new, even more difficult missions in the enemy rear, the command began to select the most daring and intelligent scouts and partisans. And among the first, the choice of the headquarters of the 3rd Belorussian Front fell on Captain Pavel Krylatykh. Native Kirov region, former student Sverdlovsk Mining Institute, Captain Pavel Andreevich Krylatykh had extensive experience behind enemy lines. It was a scout, so to speak, with higher education... His group "The Seagull", operating in the Minsk region, obtained and passed on to the command a lot of valuable information.

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

Ivan Melnikov was selected as the second deputy. He and his bosom friends, also Ivans - Ivan Ovcharov and Ivan Tselikov - have long acted as military intelligence officers in the Mogilev region. They were tough guys. "Nails would be made of these Ivanovs!" - Paraphrasing the poet Tikhonov, Captain Krylatykh spoke with pride about them later.

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

From the former partisans, the "Jack" group included Belarusians Iosif Zvarika, fifteen-year-old Genka Tyshkevich, taken by the captain literally at the last minute, and Natan Ranevsky, a former student of the Leningrad Krupskaya komvuz, who knew a little German.

Perhaps, - the captain once said to Anya Morozova, - we will arrange you behind enemy lines. Therefore, you need to know as much as possible about the area where we will be working.

He locked the door, unrolled the roll of cards on the table. Anya's heart beat faster ... and suddenly it stopped.

The captain jabbed his forefinger somewhere under Konigsberg.

Yes, Anya, we will be thrown into East Prussia, into the very den of the beast. Here is the Rominten Forest - the former Hohenzollern nature reserve. Goering is hunting there now. Around - an almost solid fortress. And here, near Rastenburg, is Hitler's main headquarters. Himmler himself is responsible for her security. - 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 long ago. I knew what and where I was going ...

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

The Swan is flying. Flies for the first time in his life. Flies over a winding line of flares of fire on black ground. This is the front. Somewhere there, Yan Bolshoi, a former partisan brigade commander Danchenkov, and many of her fighting friends are fighting. And she, "Swan", flies even further, over the edge Big land, beyond the border of the unknown.

Below is East Prussia. Below is Germany. The war has returned to its zero meridian. From here began the "drang" to 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 Geppner poured in.

Get ready!

Eight scouts and two radio scouts line up facing the tail of the plane. The halyards are attached to a steel cable overhead. The rumble of motors bursts into the open doors.

Let's go!

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

The whirlwind from the screws whirled, whirled Anya. She fell like a stone. And suddenly a strong jolt shook her - the parachute opened with a sharp, like a shot, pop. Anya looked up at the silvery-snow dome illuminated by the moon, and exuberant, crazy joy made her frozen heart beat. She flew, hovered like a bird, not feeling the speed of the fall. In the surging silence, the rumble of the Douglas was barely audible. Below the squares of the forest were black ...

Of the ten paratroopers of the Jack group, six, including Anya, hung on tall pines. 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 soon as possible. But the most unpleasant thing was that the fighters could not find a cargo parachute with a bale, which contained ammunition, spare radio kits and a two-week ration of food.

The Nazis, alarmed by the drop of the landing near Tilsit, from the very first day, as soon as the reconnaissance aircraft spotted parachutes hanging on the pines near the village of Elchtal - the Valley of Elk - parachutes hanging from the pines, organized a pursuit. At the signal "Attention - parachutists!" the entire huge machine of the Security Police and SS went 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 parts of the radio eavesdropping. The direction finders indicated exactly in which square of the forest the scouts were hiding, and an hour after the radio session, special SS teams to combat paratroopers began to raid the forest. The "Jack" group had to dodge, confuse tracks, mine their way with "anti-personnel" and sprinkle it with tobacco soaked in gasoline in order to deceive the dogs.

On the third night, at the bridge over the rather wide river Parve, the scouts encountered the Nazis. In this fleeting skirmish, a German bullet stung in the very heart of Captain Pavel Krylatykh, the commander of the Jack group. The command of the group was taken over by the first deputy of the Krylatykh Nikolai Shpakov. He removed a field bag with maps from his murdered friend. He gave "Walter" to Anya, and the shot-through jacket to Genka Tyszkiewicz.

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

Nikolay Shpakov was in command of the "Jack" group for almost two months. Anya and Zina transmitted radiogram after radiogram to the Center with information about the Ilmenhorst fortified area, which was superior in power to the famous Siegfried Line, about the transportation of enemy personnel and equipment along railroad Koenigsberg - Tilsit. 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 arrange the "Swan" in East Prussia, in this patrimony of the "Grand Duke" Erich Koch, Gauleiter and CC-Gruppenfuehrer, the executioner - Reichskommissar of Ukraine. No, apparently, "Swan" was destined to remain a wild forest swan! ..

It was difficult, very difficult for Anya the underground worker in Seshch, but even more difficult was the work of a scout at the very walls of the Wolfsschanze - Hitler's Wolf Lair. Fights, combing, round-ups, ambushes ... I was tormented by hunger. Only occasionally did "Jack" manage to take the load at night - either the chase or the weather interfered. And after each drop of the cargo, the Gestapo men again found a group, again the thick lines of SS men combed through the forest. And again the Dzhekovtsy went to the breakthrough, fighting off with machine gun fire and "fennecs" - that is how the F-1 grenades were called in the group.

Two months passed - the forces of the group were melting. Zvarik was killed, Ranevsky and Tyshkevich went missing during the battle with an ambush. Anya was not destined to find out that Ranevsky, who injured his leg, and Genka Tyshkevich, who had adhered to him, would wait for their own people, hiding in the forests and even on a farm with a German who lost faith in Hitler's victory. Unfortunately, without communication 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 killed in the same night ambush in the forest. But this is not so ...

About Anna Morozova, an active participant, and then the leader of the Seshchino underground, I, her former comrade in the military unit, was able to tell for the first time in 1959 on the pages of Komsomolskaya Pravda. Then the story "Call the fire on ourselves!" was published as a separate book, the first Soviet multi-part television film of the same name appeared. Then it was believed that after the liberation of Seshcha, Anya Morozova was abandoned in Poland. It was only in 1966 that I was lucky to find in the archives documentary evidence of the heroic work of radio intelligence officer Anya Morozova with the Jack group in East Prussia before she came to Poland. In 1967, I first told about these facts in the documentary story "Swan Song" on the pages of the same "Komsomolskaya Pravda" (Komsomolskaya Pravda). In "Swan Song" I wrote that Nikolai Shpakov was killed in a night ambush ...

But the search continues to this day. The heads of the archive, with the help and with the participation of whom this collection was prepared, helped to find in the reports of the scouts operating in East Prussia in the fall of 1944, a unique document that makes it possible to clarify a number of facts. It turns out that Nikolai Shpakov did not die that night, but was cut off by the dagger fire of the Nazis, who staged a night ambush, from his group, which he commanded so wonderfully in the most difficult conditions. But he got, as they say, out of the fire and into the fire. At first he was incredibly lucky: while looking for the Dzhekovites, 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, starved ... One can imagine how the commander suffered and suffered, cut off from his scouts. But also in new group he was always ahead - that 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's farm - he was struck by a bullet from a German attack aircraft ...

When the "Jack" group was operating in East Prussia, I was with my group in Wartheland, in the Schneidemühl-Posen region (now Pyla-Poznan). 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, the Jacks. True, the population density of Wartheland is denser than in East Prussia, and there were fewer forests here, but we did have such assistants that the Dzhekovites did not have - Poles, farm laborers, half-slaves, whom the Germans did not manage to evict 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 emaciated, so haggard. Vanya Ovcharov seems to have developed chronic tuberculosis - he coughed up blood, his face took on a waxy hue.

The Germans called the paratroopers "forest ghosts". The pale and gaunt Jacks in their spotted, yellow-green jackets really looked like forest spirits. Sometimes they had to drink from a hoof track on a forest track, at a boar watering hole, dotted with traces of hardened boars, elk, deer ...

Once the Center threw out a rifle with a silencer to the scouts at their request. From the "noiseless", which fired special lightweight cartridges with green heads, it was possible to knock out a roe deer, but the meat quickly deteriorated - there was no way to start a fire, and the very first attempt to do this almost ruined the group. In the East Prussian forests, there were many people dangerous for scouts - gamekeepers, rangers, foresters, loggers. True, there were mostly old people and invalids, but each of them could in no time contact the Gestapo, police and gendarmes, who would immediately flood the forest. Often, the Hitlerites called in young cadets of military schools and detachments of the Hitler Youth who were scouring dangerous packs in the forest squares to help.

The scouts, especially at night, were very annoyed by the endless rows of barbed wire, with which the Grossbauer kulaks surrounded their lands and lands. Apparently, the neighbors were not very fond of each other here ... An even bigger snag 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 it was possible, the Jacks continued to take "tongues". The order to the Jack group clearly stated, "Be proactive." And this first of all meant taking "tongues". Captain Krylatykh managed to take the first "language". This was the first "tongue" seen in the forest by Anya. For five years he fought in foreign lands, and was captured on his own! And how did he not resemble those haughty, arrogant, arrogant "conquerors" of the eastern lands that Anya saw in Sesche - Colonel Duda, Lieutenant Colonel Ahrweiler, SS-Obersturmführer Werner, those who boasted that the Kremlin had been turned into a heap of ruins by bombs, and the Red Army has been destroyed.

"Language" babbled something about Karl Marx, about Thälmann, it was not "Heil Hitler" who spoke, but "mouth-front". Anya simply did not recognize this fascist! ..

After meeting with the "languages", Anya or Zina worked on the key, tapping out radio messages with new important information needed by the command of the 3rd Belorussian Front.

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

Lily cold autumn rains. Camouflage suits got wet, dirty, half-rotted clothes got wet through, but there was nowhere to dry. We also met the October holiday from hand to mouth.

And the front still stood and stood still. There was no food load due to the difficult weather.

It would seem that the feeling of complete hopelessness was supposed to break the spirit of the Jacks and destroy them. But this did not happen and could not happen. After all, it was the autumn of forty-fourth! After all, Anya and her friends have already survived the battles for both Moscow and Stalin's city, almost all of them have already been liberated. Soviet land... The Dzhekovtsy understood that a complete victory was not far off.

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

And again, and again combing, round-ups, ambushes in the night ...

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

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

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

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

By the way, on Prussian soil, Anya continued to fight with the 6th fleet of the Luftwaffe, which at one time replaced the 2nd fleet of Field Marshal Kesselring and commanded this 6th fleet by the same Field Marshal von Graim. Anya spotted von Greim's airfield, and the field marshal's "listeners" invariably spotted her and Zina's radio. Yes, the fight went on and characters remained mostly the same ...

Frosts became more and more frequent. Melnikov is the coast of the Dzhekovites, looking for haystacks for a day in the forest, prepared by German gamekeepers for winter feeding of the forest ruminant. By morning, the haystack that hid the Jacks was covered with thick white frost on the outside. Soon, soon the first snow will fall, and then every trace of the scouts will be imprinted on the powder. Painted in White color tanks - "tigers" and "panthers". German soldiers put on white camouflage suits with white hoods over their helmets. And the Center did not send any cargo - the weather was not flying! ..

Hunger drove Anya to the farm.

Verist, yes? Who's there? - asked the owner behind the door - an old bauer.

I am a refugee. From Goldap, - Anya answered in German, casting a glance at two of her comrades who were standing on the porch with machine guns.

We are prohibited from admitting strangers. Go your way!

I'm going to Gdynia. Sell ​​bread ...

To Gdynia? Not Gdynia, but Gottenhaven!

And the old bauer shot through the window with a shotgun.

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

Winter is not far off. What will happen to the group then?

In mid-November, the Center threw out a new commander to the "Jack" group - Anatoly Morzhin. The scouts took him in the area of ​​the Rominten Forest, the protected forest of the Hohenzollern, 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 his headquarters to the western headquarters to lead his last major offensive adventure in the Ardennes from there.

But Hitler's large forces still remained in East Prussia and Poland. Finding out what these forces are - this was the first task of the "Jack" group.

The young lieutenant Anatoly Morzhin, who was in the Kletnyansky forests near Sescha and in Belarus, looked with longing and sympathy at the dzhekovzen - they were exhausted, not people, but shadows ... How long will they survive the battles? After all, now he, Morzhin, is responsible for them. There is nothing easier to die in this non-hamlet, but how to die usefully, or even better to be useful and not die at all!

Morzhin thought hard, and finally decided to ask the command about the transfer of 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 Jackovites, the Center allowed the group to leave the specified area of ​​action. The scouts had to go through the operational rear areas of almost the entire Army Group "Center" - in the rear area of ​​the 3rd Panzer Army, 4th and 2nd Wehrmacht field armies, just where the formation of units and formations was going on for the defense of the East Prussian citadel third Reich.

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

And after the Krylatykh, Shpakov, Melnikov, the fourth commander of the Jack group, Anatoly Morzhin, did what seemed impossible.

The path was long and difficult in the region of the Masurian Lakes. "Jack" even went past Rastenburg, under which, in the swampy coniferous thickets of the Gorlitz forest, Hitler's underground bunker, like a huge reinforced concrete skull, was hiding under a camouflage net.

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 at 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 left behind. Finally they are in Poland! On the advice of the Poles, who warmly greeted Soviet intelligence in the villages of Myshinetskaya Pushcha, the four settled not in houses, but in a forest dugout not far from the village of Veydo. The Poles said that Hitler annexed all northern regions of Poland to the Reich as early as 1939, that the Myszynetskaya Pushcha region became part of the Ciechanow District, attached to East Prussia, that in this district, like the old Teutonic knight-knights in the Polish borderlands, the subordinates of the Gauleiter are ferocious "Erich bloody" SS men, gendarmes, policemen. The war unleashed by Hitler against the Soviet Union prevented the complete eviction of Poles from the northern regions of Poland to the Warsaw General Government. But all the best lands were already transferred to the Nazi colonists from the Reich, who turned the Poles into slaves. Gauleiter Koch took away from the Poles even their homeland, their nationality, having ordered in the Ausweiss in the column on nationality to put: "not available."

A friend in need is a friend indeed. Yan Mankovsky and his comrades - Yan Tyma, Vaclav Messias, Stefan Gorkevich - found friends and brothers-in-arms in the Russian village of Seshcha near Bryansk. Anya Morozova and the Dzhekovites found loyal comrades on Polish soil, not far from the historical field near Grunwald, where the Polish-Lithuanian-Russian army dealt a crushing blow to the dogs-knights of the Teutonic Order in the old days.

For the first time in many weeks, the scouts ate their fill of hot food, for the first time in almost five months they washed in the bath.

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

Anatoly Morzhin was actively establishing intelligence. The center asked to focus on the Letzen and Mlavsky fortified areas, which covered the southern and southeastern approaches to the East Prussian citadel. Anya suggested composing detailed map defensive belts based on conversations with Poles who fled from digging German trenches, and there were many such Poles. She also advised to send specially selected volunteers of the "Jack" group to the most interesting, key areas, especially the former "Zholner" soldiers of the Polish Army, sappers who were well versed in all kinds of fortifications and defensive lines.

It would be possible to send reliable people from local residents and to German army, but in the villages they said that Hitler's call for Polish volunteers to the "valiant Great German Wehrmacht" had failed completely and completely. The Germans themselves had to rip off draft leaflets from the walls, fences and telegraph poles, because on each of them there were inscriptions offensive for the Nazis like "Hitler kaput!"

Finally, in Myshinetskaya Pushcha, the Dzhekovites took the cargo from the mainland. But they did not succeed in really expanding the work here.

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

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

If you can, Anya, tell your mother that I died as it should!

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

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

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

The raids and combing in Myshinetskaya Pushcha continued. On the advice of experienced Polish partisans from the glorious Army of Ludova, which was represented in the Mazovian region by the Partisan Brigade named after the Sons of the Mazovian Land, the captain of the Chernykh, with the permission of the Center, decided to temporarily leave for Serptsky Povet (uyezd) in order to hide there in the floodplains of the Vkra River. We set off together with a small detachment of the "Black" (Ignacy Sedlikha) guarantor.

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

The bailiff told Captain Chernykh and Anya about how a major intelligence officer of the Guard, Major "Gadfly", had recently died tragically in Serptsky district near Bezhunya. Anya, of course, could not then know that it was about Gennady Bratchikov, her friend. And now 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 Sedlich's lieutenant stopped for the night in a stodol and a hut of a peasant Tadeusz Brzeziński near the village of Nowa Ves, not far from the Myslin farm and an island on the river where Bratchikov died. At night, the hostess of the house gave Anna hot milk to drink - the girl caught a bad cold on the way from Myshinetskaya Pushcha - thaws gave way to frosts, fogs - snowfalls ...

Punishers attacked the farm at dawn. Led by SS and SD officers, they acted for sure - they surrounded the farm in a tight ring, opened heavy fire. If the guerrillas were at a loss, they would have perished every single one of them. But they responded with fire to fire and broke through a dense chain of punishers. The captain of the Blacks fell with his face covered in blood ...

Anya ran through the lead blizzard, clutching her radio, her Severok to her heart like a child. A few steps remained to the forest, to a smoother one, when an explosive bullet hit the left wrist, right into the watch strap, snapping like a pistol shot. The bullet broke through the bone, and the hand dangled from the tendons. Anya was picked up by the Poles, and some partisan took her radio.

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

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

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

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

Three small ...

Anya shook her head negatively. Maybe, she remembered at that moment her three sisters, remembered how she sent Masha to the airfield ... Yes, she risked her sisters and her father and mother then, but she did it not for her own sake, but for the sake of a great cause, which is for her , for Anya Morozova, there was more than life - her life and the life of relatives and friends ...

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

Explosive bullets seemed to crack everywhere in the marshes. The Germans were on their heels.

The partisans suffered heavy losses. They retreated to the floodplains in order to escape, having crossed the treacherous river Vkru, which does not freeze in winter. They could not 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 return for you ...

In the forest, two Poles turned up, two old men of tar. They helped to hide Anya behind a swamp in a willow ...

The partisans left. Gone and pitch. Anya was left all alone. And in the distance you could already hear the barking of dogs - the SS men and gendarmes were walking with the dogs. On the snow were clearly visible scarlet stains of blood, Anya's blood. Two bloodhounds were walking right on this bloody trail.

Anya took the strap off the pistol and put 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 "fennecs".

She fought back to the last. Shooting from the Walther, she killed three Nazis and wounded both dogs with the first grenade. This saved the life of the resin worker Pavel Yankovsky, who was hiding nearby in a swamp and was the only eyewitness to the last minutes of the scout. 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 pulled out the ring of the last "F-1" grenade with her teeth and pressed the ribbed "fennec" to her chest ...

Anya lay dead on the street of a Polish village. An SS officer, standing next to the mutilated corpse of a scout, 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 over. Germany was heading towards inevitable defeat, and he still did not understand anything, this SS officer. He did not see the sources of Anya's courage and strength inaccessible to him. I didn’t know that no matter how much the goose cheered up, it wouldn’t be a swan.

More than twenty years after the war, I came to Poland to visit the grave of Anya Morozova In the old village of Gradzanowo, Serpzky Povet, Mazovia Voivodeship. Almost very close - in the same district, in the town of Bezhun - the ashes of the guard Major Gennady Bratchikov are buried.

Two scouts, two Heroes of the Soviet Union, two holders of the Order of the Grunwald Cross lie almost side by side in fraternal Polish land. They lay in this land even when it was trampled by the forged boots of the Wehrmacht. Both gave their lives for defeating the enemy, for Soviet army and the Polish Army paid less blood for the liberation of Poland.

In the village cemetery, a wide marble slab rests under old thick trees at the entrance. An inscription in Polish is carved on it:

ANYA MOROZOVA

SLEEP QUIETLY IN THE POLISH LAND!

The guard of honor of the young scouts froze at the grave.

In those days, almost all of Poland watched on TV a film about Anya Morozova and her friends - "Calling fire on ourselves!" All the scouts of the village of Gradzanova also watched it. And so the director of this first Soviet TV serial Sergei Kolosov and the actress Lyudmila Kasatkina, who played the role of Ani Morozova so superbly, came to visit them ...

Ani's name, now forever immortalized, is engraved in gold letters on a stone board at the entrance to the village school of Gradzanov. This school was named after Anya Morozova. And the schoolchildren bring roses and red carnations to their sacred "Swan" grave every day.

And twice a year white flocks fly over it, and swan clicks are heard far around. As if the swans are trumpeting into a melodious silver horn and calling to an unknown path, calling to a heroic deed.

Ovid Gorchakov

In the year of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, in 1965, Soviet television showed the TV serial Calling Fire on Ourselves, which is often called the first Soviet television series. Its plot was built around the activities of an international underground group at a German airfield located in the town of Seshcha. The main character of the film was Anya Morozova, who became the head of the underground.

The film was an incredible success. The audience watched with bated breath. It wasn't just a great game actress Lyudmila Kasatkina, who played the role of Ani Morozova, not only in a brilliant work directed by Sergei Kolosov... At that time, the theme of the war was close and understandable to everyone, and even the slightest falsehood was immediately discovered by the audience.

There was no falsehood in "Calling Fire on Ourselves", since the creators of the picture practically did not have to invent anything. The film is based on the story of the same name, written writer Ovid Gorchakov... Gorchakov himself during the war was the head of a reconnaissance group behind enemy lines and wrote about what he knew well.

The story of Anna Morozova was documentary - she really headed an underground group in Seshcha. But Lyudmila Kasatkina, who played her in the film, was about 40 years old at the time of filming. The underground worker Morozova turned 21 in 1942.

Accountant from Seshcha

Anna Morozova was born on May 23, 1921 in the village of Polyany, Mosalsky district, Kaluga province, into a peasant family. Then, together with her parents, she moved to Bryansk, and then to the small town of Seshcha.

Here she graduated from 8 classes, then courses in accountants and began to work in her specialty. The Morozov family had five children, Anya was the eldest, and she needed to help her parents.

In the 1930s, a military airfield for heavy aviation was built in Seshche, after which an aviation unit was relocated to it. It was in this unit that Anna Morozova worked before the war.

A swift German offensive at the beginning of the war led to the capture of Seshcha. The Hitlerite command, having appreciated the Soviet airfield, placed there a base of the 2nd Air Fleet of the Nazi Air Force, interacting with the troops of the Center group. There were up to 300 German bombers at the base. Bomb strikes were carried out on Moscow from Seshcha.

The zone within a radius of 5 kilometers was transferred by the Germans to a special position. The Nazis intended to ensure the safety of the air base from the actions of the partisans.

It seemed that Seshcha had been turned by the Germans into an impregnable fortress. But in this fortress it was still possible to find flaws.

Accountant Morozova left with them during the retreat of the Soviet troops. But then she returned - confused, frightened, like other refugees who did not manage to get to their own, ahead of the Nazi offensive. During the check, the former accountant of the military unit spoke frankly about her previous work and did not arouse suspicion among the Germans. A 20-year-old girl who wants to return to her mother as soon as possible - which one is her spy?

Interbrigade behind enemy lines

Anna was allowed to settle in Sesche, where she got a job as a laundress for the Nazis. Her pre-war friends worked with her: Pasha Bakutina, Lucy Senchilina,Tanya Vasenkova, Lida Korneeva.

Neither the Gestapo nor their accomplices from among the local collaborators could have imagined that this company of laughing girls was an underground group collecting information about the German airbase and transmitting it through partisans to Moscow.

Anna Morozova kept in touch first with the 1st Kletnyansky partisan brigade, and then with the reconnaissance group of the 10th Army of the Western Front. The curators knew her under the pseudonym Reseda.

Initially, Reseda was an assistant the head of the Seshchino underground Konstantin Povarov, acting under the cover of a police officer, and after his death, she led the underground.

It was a very dangerous job: any mistake could lead to the disclosure of the entire group and the death of its members.

To obtain accurate information about what was happening directly at the airfield, people were needed who had access there. The Germans used Poles mobilized into auxiliary troops as airfield workers. The girls from Morozova's group got acquainted with the Poles and carefully led them to a conversation about their attitude towards the Nazis. As a result, it turned out that the Poles hate the Nazis and are ready to fight against them. This is how Anna Morozova's group acquired a "Polish link": Yanom Mankovsky, Stefan Gorkevich,Vaclav Messias,Yan Tyma.

The Poles not only supplied information - they were able to create a guidance post at the airfield for Soviet aircraft that attacked the German airbase.

By the fall of 1942, Soviet pilots bombed the airfield almost every flight night. In total, about 2.5 thousand bombs were dropped on the base, dozens of enemy aircraft were destroyed, runways and logistics facilities were destroyed.

The Czechs joined Anna Morozova's group: Wendelin Roblichka, who served as a corporal in the German headquarters, and his compatriot Gern Rubert, a signalman at the airfield. The first passed passwords to the Poles, thanks to which they could enter any part of the airfield, the second provided information about where German planes were flying and how many of them did not return from the mission.

Reseda becomes a Swan

The international underground in Sesche acted insolently. Following the guidance of Soviet aviation, the underground went on to direct sabotage. Receiving magnetic mines from the partisan brigade, the Poles at the airfield put them in the bomb bays of bombers flying off on a mission. So 26 Nazi aircraft were destroyed.

The German command understood that the underground was operating in Sesche. The Gestapo managed to identify individual members of the group who were executed after torture, but they did not succeed in completely crushing Morozova's group.

In September 1943, Soviet troops liberated Seshcha. The history of Anna Morozova's underground group is over. At the headquarters of the 10th Army, she was awarded the medal "For Courage".

At 22, Anna Morozova has done more for her country than many in long life... Everyday risk, life on the brink of death - she had every right to return to a peaceful life, especially since there was a lot of work in Sesh to restore the destroyed economy.

But Anna asked to go to the school of radio operators to continue fighting the enemy.

She was sent to the school of intelligence management of the Red Army, after which she was included in the special group "Jack" as a radio operator. Received Morozova and a new pseudonym - Lebed.

"Forest ghosts"

The Jack group was sent to East Prussia in the summer of 1944. The reconnaissance had to be conducted in difficult conditions: without the help of the local population and with the constant pursuit of the Nazis, who sought to eliminate the group in their deep rear as soon as possible.

The information obtained by the "Jack" group and transmitted by radio by Lebed was of great importance. But for this information the scouts paid with their lives. The Germans called the paratroopers "forest ghosts." The scouts, suffering from hunger, disease and terrible fatigue, really looked like ghosts. Their situation deteriorated rapidly.

In November, the "Jack" group, in connection with the impossibility of continuing operations in East Prussia, requested permission to move to the territory of Poland. Such permission was given, but only four scouts managed to leave the territory of East Prussia. Among them was Anna Morozova.

On the territory of Poland, the "Jack" group established contact with the Polish partisans and resumed their activities. But on December 27, 1944, punishers attacked their trail. Of the entire group, only Lebed managed to survive after this battle.

From a radiogram by Anna Morozova dated December 30, 1944: “To the center from Lebed. Three days ago SS men suddenly attacked the dugout. According to the Poles, the Germans captured Pavel Lukmanov, he could not stand the torture and betrayed us. The Frenchman died in silence. Jay was immediately wounded in the chest. She told me: "If you can, tell your mother that I did everything I could, died well." And she shot herself. The Gladiator and the Mole were also wounded and were leaving, firing back, in one direction, and I in the other. Breaking away from the SS, she went to the village to the Poles, but all the villages were occupied by the Germans. For three days she wandered through the forest, until she came across scouts from the special group of Captain Chernykh. It was not possible to establish the fate of Gladiator and Mole. "

She fought to the end

Morozova joined the special sabotage and reconnaissance group of the intelligence directorate of the 2nd Belorussian Front of the guard of Captain Chernykh, abandoned on the territory of Poland in the rear of the East Prussian group of enemy forces in November 1944. On December 30, the radio operator Morozova transmitted to the Center information obtained by the Chernykh group.

A group of scouts was ordered to redeploy from the area of ​​the city of Pshasnysh in the vicinity of Plock, in order to take refuge there in the floodplains of the Vkry River. The Black group moved along with the Polish partisans Lieutenant Black - Ignacy Sedlich... On December 31, 1944, after a 14-hour march, partisans and scouts stopped to rest at the Novaya Ves farm. But here the SS men overtook them again. Engaged in a battle, during which Anna Morozova was seriously wounded - a bullet shattered the wrist of her left hand. Polish partisans helped her to get to the river Vkry. The river had to be forced by swimming, but the wounded radio operator could not do this.

A Pole from a nearby village agreed to hide Anna at home, but she refused - if they found her during a search, the Nazis would have shot both her and the peasant with his entire family.

Two elderly Polish resin workers who worked in the area where the partisans escaped from the punishers decided to hide Lebed. They placed it behind a swamp in a willow.

The partisans expected to return for the radio operator. But the dogs of the punishers led the pursuers straight to the shelter of the wounded scout. One of the tar Mecheslav Novitsky captured nearby, the Germans shot. Second, Pavel Yankovsky, managed to hide. He witnessed what happened next.

The Nazis offered Morozova to surrender, but she threw a grenade in response. This explosion killed two dogs and wounded one of the punishers. The swan fired back to the last, destroying two more pursuers. Finally the shots were silenced. When the Germans approached the radio operator, Anna Morozova blew them up with the last grenade.

Only a few hours remained before the onset of the victorious 1945.

Awarding twenty years later

In his book, Ovid Gorchakov wrote that after the mutilated body of the deceased scout was delivered to the nearest Polish village, the SS officer in command of the operation forced his soldiers to march in front of the murdered girl, paying tribute to her courage and fortitude.

Anna Morozova was buried in Radzanovo, 12 kilometers east of the Polish city of Plock.

For the first time, her feat became widely known after an article written by Ovid Gorchakov in 1959. In the early 1960s, Gorchakov was helped to write the book "Calling Fire on Ourselves" veteran of the Polish Army Janusz Pshimanovsky, who is also known as the author of the story "Four Tankmen and a Dog", which became the basis for the famous TV series.

The work of Gorchakov and Pshimanovsky, and then Kolosov and Kasatkina, helped restore historical justice. After the show of the series "Calling Fire on Ourselves", veterans of the Great Patriotic War, public organizations appealed to the leadership of the USSR with a proposal to confer the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on Anna Morozova.

By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 8, 1965, Anna Afanasyevna Morozova was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the exemplary performance of combat missions of the command and for her courage and heroism in battles against the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War. The Polish People's Republic awarded Anna Morozova with the Order of the Grunwald Cross, II degree.

In Sesh, today no one is left alive who remembers how the local underground fought against the Nazis during the war years. But there is still a military airfield, where the military transport aviation regiment is based, the pilots of which fly on An-124 Ruslan and Il-76.

On April 28, 2011, Sescha was awarded the honorary title of the Bryansk region "Village of Partisan Glory".