"Forward!" The captain shouted, "Quick! ”

Andrasdorf leaped forward, and the bricks collapsed, but he jumped out of the trench and ran without looking back towards the wall of the position, which was so far away at this moment.

He ran forward without a word, as if he felt alone. His heart was beating violently in his chest, and he didn't even hear the footsteps behind him, but he didn't have time to look back.

Andreasdorf did not know if the timer was still ticking, whether the Germans were already hurriedly pushing bullets into the chamber, but for the moment no one fired at him, at the man who had run over the position where the shells had been overturned. It's just that the hot wind filled with gunsmoke and the smell of blood rushed towards him.

Suddenly, a figure flashed out of the crater in front of him, and Andrasdorf barely collapsed, recognizing it as a soldier in the correctional camp. Apparently, the soldier also fled from the position, but was unable to reach the position, so he lay in the crater, and at this moment he ran ahead of the charging soldiers. At the very moment when Andreasdorf was happy that the soldier of the correctional battalion was still alive, a volley of dozens of shuttle bullets tore through the silence, and the bullets whistled overhead: the Germans fired.

Someone behind him shouted loudly. Andreasdorf wanted to lie down, and if it weren't for the fact that the Punishment Battalion soldier was still striding forward with all his might, he might have fallen down. Andrasdorf thought that these bullets were not fired by him, and he did not lie down, he shrunk his neck and shouted: "Ula! - Ulla! ……”

So in a field of "Ula! He ran to the base of the wall in one breath, pressed against the wall between the windows, and looked back. Only three fell: one was no longer moving, and the other two were still wriggling in the dust. The rest of the men rushed into the corner of the artillery fire, and the soldier of the punishment battalion stood in front of the wall between the windows next to him and shouted:

"Grenade! Throw grenades! ……”

Andrasdorf pulled a grenade from his waist and threw it into the window—directly into the glare of the submachine gun fire. With a thud, he immediately rushed into the scorched smoke of the grenade explosion, jumped in with the butt of his rifle on the window sill that had been mutilated by the bullet, and fell to the floor, but he rolled backwards in time, and then the soldiers of the correctional battalion fell beside him with a thud. All around was the rumble of explosions, the smoke and dust flickering with the glow of fire, and the bullets smashed the walls straight to the bricks and plaster. Andrasdorf sat on the floor and fired a few short rows of bullets into the flash.

"Retreat in the back! Upwards! Shoot a little higher! A little higher! The correctional battalion soldier shouted.

The Germans were retreating upwards—to the backstage, where the fire of the submachine guns flashed. Andrasdorf threw the submachine gun back and fired a long shuttle, when suddenly the fire went out, the gun was dumb, and the bolt shook straight back.

"Fight, keep fighting! Fast! ”

Andrasdorf desperately tried to touch his coat pocket: he couldn't find a bullet. So he pulled out his last grenade and ran into the thick darkness against the rows of bullets that came his way. Bullets puffed to his feet, bricks flying onto his boots. Andrasdorf threw a grenade as he did on the driving field, and then fell to the ground. With a bang, the grenade exploded.

"Well blown, commander." The Correctional Battalion soldier helped him stand up as he spoke, "The boys have rushed to the backstage. We don't need to go up to clean it up: the Germans can't run anywhere. ”

From above came shouts, hoarse curses, the clashing of metal, the sound of heavy pounding: soldiers were exterminating the Germans in hand-to-hand combat. Andrasdorf looked around, and in the smoky dim darkness he could see the figures of the regular Red Army soldiers running by, the corpses strewn across the floor, and the weapons scattered.

Andrasdorf picked up the submachine gun from the floor, flipped the body of a nearby German soldier with a hard blow, ripped the magazine from his belt, and headed for the exit.

Before he could reach the exit, he stopped: their Maxim heavy machine gun was still in the exit, and the Heavy was lying face down on the machine gun, clinging to the bullet shield. Before he died, he had six black holes on his back, which had been sharply arched before he died, and there were six black holes with blood spots.

"It was Rumyantsev, he did not evacuate." Solnyrev, who approached, said.

"He's stuck here," Andreasdorf sighed, "not like the two of us." ”

"But we fought back, we are not deserters, not in the past, not now." Solnyrev stressed that he was originally a sergeant, and his unit was scattered, and he easily escaped from the enemy-occupied area, and after finding the unit, but because no one could prove his experience in the enemy-occupied area, he was sent to the punishment camp as a deserter, and he always resolutely and vehemently refused to accept the charge of desertion.

Andreasdorf, unlike Solnyrev, was a "political prisoner".

"He should be buried, Solnyrev." Andreasdorf regretted saying that, so he immediately diverted the subject.

"But where can I bury it? The stone here is three meters long. The soil was frozen to the ground. ”

"It's buried in the yard, in the crater."

Suddenly, there was a trembling hum in the air, louder and closer, drowning out all other sounds. The two of them threw themselves into the corner and lay on the floor. The air wave suddenly rolled up dust, the walls trembled, and then an earth-shattering explosion rang out.

"After the air strike, they will attack!" Andreasdorf shouted loudly, he couldn't hear his own voice. "I'm guarding the door! And you - the window! Window! Solnirev, window ......"

There was a deafening explosion beside him, the walls trembled, and bricks fell. The blast overturned the Maxim heavy machine gun, tossing the body of the Heavy to the side. In an instant, everything was obscured by the scorching smoke of gunpowder, and the air was suffocating. Andrasdorf coughed and panted and pounced on the heavy machine gun, crawling and dragging it into the corner.

"Pay attention to the window, Solnirev! ……”

Solnyrev covered his ears and lay on the ground. Andrasdorf shook him, pulled him, kicked him, but he just clung to the masonry floor.

There was another loud bang beside him, and bricks fell from the arches of the door. There was another explosion, and then another, and Andreasdorf, trapped in the pile of bricks, no longer counted the explosions, they were already rumbling together.

No one knows how many hours the artillery fire lasted. And when the surroundings began to fall silent, and they crawled out of the pile of bricks, the rumble of the bombers flying low was already in the air.