Man and war
For the glory of the dead there.
A. Akhmatova
Wars are a product of evil. Human evil. The combination of the words “man” and “war” contradicts all human laws of good. But wars are not only the past of mankind, it is, unfortunately, its present.
Blood is poured in Chechnya and Kosovo, in Sierra Leone and Ulster, in Palestine and Israel… And everywhere die someone’s fathers, husbands, brothers, sons… There is a new war around the world, whose name is terrorism. There are no rules at all. No soldiers are fighting soldiers, but thugs against everyone, including children and women, sick and old.
When it comes to protecting the Fatherland, about the salvation of its people, in this war, a person participates at the behest of the heart. In the battle ready to go those who in their lives did not take up arms, those who are said that they and flies will not offend. Everyone who is able to carry arms, they are in defense of
He was a man of a very peaceful profession – an economist. He worked before the war at the institute, which is now the Polytechnic University. On the first day of the war, he himself went to the military commissariat, without waiting for the summons to be called, and she would not have come, since his position and profession were not subject to conscription. How high were his civil position and human conscience! In September the family received the first letter from him. I saw a pile of yellowed letters that my grandmother kept carefully. They do not have the usual postage stamps. They only have the stamps “Field mail No. …” and “Viewed by military censorship”. The last letter is very disturbing.
For a long time our family tried to find the grave of great-grandfather. But unsuccessfully. We know only one thing: it is somewhere in the forests of the Baltic States. But there is a place in Kharkov where his surname and initials are written on the marble slab with gold. Among hundreds of names of Kharkov polytechnics who have not returned since that bloody war. A willow was bending over the monument on the territory of the present Polytechnic University. It has grown so much in recent years that it closes the inscription. But I know it by heart:
Dream carry through the years
And fill with happiness!
But about those who will never come again,
I adjure you: remember!
The monument and the territory around it are always well-groomed. We go there three times a year with the whole family: on Victory Day, on August 23 and on a post-Easter commemoration day. It is obligatory, but sometimes my grandmother asks: “Olezhek, let’s go to the monument, I have already prepared flowers.” On such days, we are near the marble slabs alone. And my heart contracts when I think that my grandmother did not know the man who was her father. She had no one to call: “Daddy!”
At these moments I feel that the highest concepts pass from parents to children. I realized that for the glory and for the memory of the human dead there is not. My great-grandfather did not disappear without a trace in that war. He is with us, like everyone who is next to him on marble slabs.
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