The night wave quietly splashed against the side of the Mirage, a small missile ship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy, which was peacefully dozing on the roadstead of Sevastopol.
Three of the watchmen went to the stern to quietly smoke, and there they met the boatswain, who was leisurely pitching his pipe, leaning against the AK-176 installation.
- Mikhalych, tell me something interesting! - asked the sailors of the old boatswain.

Mikhalych thoughtfully scratched his chest, brushing off a couple of shells, and puffed his pipe:

The sea keeps many amazing secrets, salagi. Have you ever heard of Ukrainian armored ghost boats?

No, - the sailors involuntarily shivered.

So listen. This is a very mysterious story. Once a Ukrainian military raider, successfully converted from an old Turkish schooner, boarded a small unarmed Crimean seiner who was catching tulka in a permitted area. Our fishermen had to endure a lot of insults and bullying. They were required to burn the Russian flag, take Ukrainian citizenship, and start jumping on the deck, but none of them budged.

And then the commander of the Ukrainian raider ordered his assistants to throw the entire fishing catch, all six tons of tulka, into the sea. The fishermen turned pale - all the hard work was destroyed before their eyes, and the fish for the fisherman is life. And then the old gray-haired captain slowly climbed onto the bridge of the seiner ...
The boatswain fell silent and began to light an extinct pipe.

The boatswain blew a crab-shaped smoke from his mouth, admired it a little and continued:

And then the seiner captain took his old, still Soviet "matyugalnik" and loudly cursed the entire Ukrainian navy. And no sooner had the last words of the curse fly away with a fresh sea breeze, when the contours and painting of all Ukrainian warships suddenly became radio-absorbing, their geometry was special, and they themselves, together with their crews, became completely invisible. And not only for the Russian fleet, but in general.

How is that? ”The audience gasped. - At all?!

Absolutely, - the boatswain nodded sternly. - Since then, no one has seen the Ukrainian navy at close range. And it will remain so until they catch and return those six tons of tulka to the Crimean fishermen. And not just any tulka, but those very fish. And there were exactly three hundred thousand of them in six tons.

And since then, many have heard the melancholy lingering groans in the night sea: "Glory to Ukraine." They say that this Ukrainian invisible navy is scurrying through the waves, trying to find those same tulle.
Here is such a marine legend, salagi. Okay, it's already four in the morning - get ready to take turns from watch.
………………..

The mother of the soldier, who was found hanged a month ago in a military unit in Slonim, does not believe in her son's suicide and tells the shocking details of army life.

The mother of the soldier Alexander Orlov, who was found with a noose around his neck on the territory of a military unit in Slonim, wants to ensure that the investigation into the death of her son is under the personal control of the president.

The woman found many ambiguities in this case and told why she did not believe in suicide.

Could return home in a month

“Sasha was not going to hang himself. What personal reasons are they talking about? What personal reasons might a soldier have? What, did he have a wife or children? Did not have. He strove home in every way to help me. I was left alone, with the youngest girl, 12 years old, going to school. I lost my husband in May, and two and a half months later my son was gone, ”says Olga Shevko, mother of 20-year-old Alexander Orlov, with pain in her voice, but without tears.

According to the mother, the son was happy to return home soon and made plans for the future.

Last fall, her son, a simple and quiet country boy, went to serve in the army. In November there was a conscription, in December - an oath, then - a service in one of the units in Slonim.

In the evening of September 5, Olga received a call from the unit and was told that her son was dead, that he was found with a noose around his neck. According to the official version, which was announced by the Ministry of Defense, it was a suicide, the reasons for which "are not related to the passage of military service."

Before the demobilization, Alexander still had six months, but the family began to collect documents so that the guy could be discharged. The eldest daughter lives in another city, is on parental leave and cannot help her mother.

In early September, documents were prepared confirming that Alexander is the only guardian in the family. They arrived by mail on September 6, all that remained was to take them to the military registration and enlistment office. If the soldier was alive, he could return home by the end of September.

Alexander Orlov had six months left before demobilization, but in September he had to be discharged for family reasons.

The last conversation

Olga recalls that her son knew about this, was looking forward to commissioning, hurrying his sister to collect the necessary papers, and in conversations with his mother he constantly discussed plans for the future.

“He was waiting, like God, for this commission. I wanted to go home. Almost every day he called me and asked if Lena had sent the documents or not, ”Olga recalls.

On the last day of his life, from about four o'clock in the afternoon, he called his mother several times from a payphone. He said that he was worried about her, that he did not sleep at night, did not know how to help her, that he wanted to get home faster. He said that he was planning to get a better paid job in order to raise money and make repairs in the house. I also wanted to erect a monument to my stepfather.

“Mom, if I'm not commissioned, I'll run away from the army. Look, mommy, I'll help you, ”were the last words of Alexander, after five in the evening he did not call again.

Mother does not believe in suicide

The mother does not fit into her head: it turned out that the son was happy to return home in the afternoon and made plans for the future, and after a couple of hours he voluntarily climbed into the noose.

“Nobody believes it here, nobody. Because, as all his acquaintances and friends say, he has a "gut" for this matter. He couldn't himself, ”Olga repeats several times.

Mother knows that the boy was found at 19:40 in a small storeroom. At the scene of the incident, she was shown that Sasha knocked the lock off the door, then, standing on a chair, hammered into the ceiling a thick hook with a finger thick, put the chair to the side and hung on all fours.

Alexander spoke little about his life in the army

“On all fours - you have to have willpower, to cling to something in order to strangle yourself. And there was nothing to cling to. If I had made up my mind, I would not have climbed off the chair, ”the soldier's mother thinks.

The woman wonders why in the unit no one saw or heard anything, because such actions could not take place in silence. When she was in the unit, she saw that there were tents not far from the entrance to the storehouse, and soldiers nearby.

“I told the investigators that it was a simulated suicide. And the door is tied from the inside to make it sound like suicide. I myself showed them how to tie the door like that, ”the woman says.

A hole in the head and bruises on the body

Her doubts are confirmed by the hematomas and bruises found on the body of her son, which were on the elbow, leg, genitals. The guy also had a "hole" in his head. The mothers were told that the head and elbow were injured when the body was removed from the noose and taken out of the locker.

The mother does not believe these explanations: “What, the deceased will have a hole in his head when he is being removed? And will a hematoma appear on the elbow? She appeared when he was fighting back when he was still alive. "

The two strangulation grooves on the son's neck also seemed suspicious. The mother believes that one of the furrows looks more like a trail from a stranglehold. Another oddity is a crooked leg. Mother saw this both in the morgue and at home.

The injuries on the head were received by Alexander after his death - this is how the mother explained. But she doesn't believe

“I see my leg is slightly bent. And even during the funeral she cried, constantly asked: “Son, why is your leg so uneven,” adds Olga.

There are no expert results that could explain the nature of the injuries.

Sasha about the service: "He who does not obey, he is hanged"

Alexander spoke little about his life in the army. Once my mother asked if he was in contact with someone. He replied that there was no one to communicate with, everyone was on their own wave, some of them had previous convictions.

Something wrong in the family began to be noticed back in May, when the guy, after a visit, with great reluctance, returned back to the army.

“At the funeral of his stepfather, a relative asked him how it was served. He answered only one thing: "Katya, if someone does not obey there, they hang him." It means that there was something, he knew something, ”the woman conveys the words of her husband’s niece.

During the last visit in July, the mother noticed that the son had become unhappy. And his sister noticed cuts on his shoulders, like razor marks. He told his sister that it was just that.

Why do you need money in the army?

Within a month after Sasha's death, former soldiers who served with the boyfriend called his mother. From them she learned what could have happened in the unit.

For example, relatives found out why the guy constantly asked for money during personal meetings and by phone. Every month he was given at least 100 rubles, but he still asked for more. On what the soldier spent this money, he did not explain to his relatives, and they did not persistently ask.

Olga found out that in the unit it was necessary to pay for correspondence on a mobile phone. I remembered how my son sent her SMS from an unfamiliar number.

“They say that there were prices: soldiers must pay 15 rubles a day so that they would not be beaten. Even one lad called home and asked his mother to bring smoked chicken, otherwise it would be bad, ”the woman says.

Soldier's mother: let the president shut down the elephant army

Olga remembered the soldier who was found in a noose in the forest near Grodno. She knows that before being transferred to Grodno, he served in the same unit where her son was, and believes that these two deaths may be connected. She doesn't believe that that soldier could escape.

The mother believes that one of the strangulation grooves on her son's neck looks more like a trail from a stranglehold.

“This is the third hanging in the army in Slonim. One was in 2013 and the second was in 2015. And everything was written off, they say, because of the girl. My Sasha is only in Slonim for the third time. Not to mention the fact that it was in Pechi, that in Grodno on September 8, a soldier was found hanged in the forest. It turns out that there are already at least five people hanged in Belarus. Children die in the army without a war. What's this going on? Can't the president shut down this elephant army? " - the mother complains and says that she intends to seek an investigation of this case.

In her opinion, the perpetrators should be, even if the version of suicide remains, and the investigation itself should be under the control of the president, as well as the investigation into the death of Private Korzhich.

“All the same, there must be a guilty person who will be held accountable for the fact that the soldier was overlooked in the army. I gave them my normal son, and they brought him to me in a coffin. Now how to give children away? If I had another son, I would not have sent him to the army in any case, I would have laid down the bones, but I would not have given him up, ”says Olga.

The Investigative Committee of Belarus is conducting an investigation into the death of a soldier in Slonim. The Ministry of Defense of Belarus also initiated its own check.

.
My mom is now 82 years old.
When the events described below took place, she was a little girl.

My uncle Herman was called to the front in January 1942.
Among those called up in Chelyabinsk, there were many people from Ukraine.
After training in a camp near Chelyabinsk, they were sent to the front.
He ended up in the Rzhev area, where fierce battles were going on.

I think that then the relatives did not know that Herman was there.
He wrote letters regularly.
By this time I already knew how to read, learned from the newspapers Pravda and Krasnaya Bashkiria.
First, by headings.
I wrote in block letters with a huge number of mistakes.

I gave my little letters to Herman to Mom so that she could send with her own.
I asked if he kills many Germans every day.
By this time, I fiercely hated the Germans not only for the abandoned house in Kharkov, for the bombing, but also for the atrocities about which newspapers with photographs wrote in every issue.
My little grief melted into the great grief of the country.
Neighbors received funerals from the front, the women did not just sob, but howled in grief.

The dad of my friend-neighbor Katya Smirnova died, Uncle Vasya was called in with us.

At the end of January 1942 we moved from Chelyabinsk to dad in Ufa.
His factory was evacuated and reunited with the local 2/13 sawmill in Nizhegorodok.

I remember how I overcame the big article "Tanya" in Pravda with a photo of her execution; I remember V. Lidin's signature about Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya.
There were many hanged and tortured throughout the occupied territory of the USSR, I saw it in Pravda.

My mother and I went to the cinema several times.
Then I watched "She Defends the Motherland" with Vera Maretskaya in the title role.
The film was preceded by a newsreel, which had two main themes: showing the atrocities of the Nazis in the recaptured territory around Moscow and labor in the rear "Everything for the front, everything for victory."
What other movie they watched, I don't remember, some kind of pre-war, but again with a newsreel.
Mom stopped taking me to the movies because at night I was tormented by nightmares and I screamed under the influence of newsreels.

Hermann wrote to my mother a letter so that she would not bring up cruelty in us, this is on my question, how many Germans he kills every day; that any wars will end sooner or later, and girls should be kind.
Mom read this to her neighbor Aunt Tanya, Katya's mother.
Katya and I discussed that we should not be specially taught to hate Germans, we know this from newspapers, funerals, films.

Mom collected a parcel for Herman: she baked cookies, bought half a kilo of caramel somewhere (maybe they bought it partially instead of sugar), knitted socks and mittens.
She gave us one candy each.

After some time, the parcel returned from the unit with the inscription “addressee left”.
Mom laid out sweets and cookies, poured us tea, but did not sit down at the table herself, settled down on the couch in the back.
We were so happy about these sweets.
But soon we wondered why my mother was not with us.
I saw that my mother was crying.
She answered my questions: Herman died, so they returned the package.
Then the three of us burst into tears.
We loved Herman very much.

Not only factories from Ukraine were evacuated to Ufa, but also the government, the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, theaters, and all sorts of institutions.
Newspapers were published in the Ukrainian language, their parents subscribed to the thick collection "Ukraine in the Lights".
I read it regularly, then I knew the Ukrainian language well.
Mom somewhere bought a map of the European territory of the USSR, from pins and pieces of red cloth regularly marked the front line in the form of flags.

A month or a month and a half later, a letter came from German from the hospital, he was wounded in the arm near Rzhev.
We had a holiday and I again wrote a letter that my mother does not teach us cruelty, that I saw it in the movies, read in the newspapers, etc., that I am not cruel to Soviet people.

During the war, Pravda regularly published cartoons of the Kukryniksy with poetic signatures.
I cut out these cartoons and put them in my daddy.

I remember the poems for the caricature, where Antonescu and the Hungarian leader were depicted, I forgot my last name.

Went from the Volga to the Danube
Our army is dear
On the Danube bank
She poured pepper on the enemy.

From such a pepper now
Sneeze in Berlin
The slime layer is poured
Russian pepper is very evil.

There was also a verse about "famously a Hungarian danced a Hungarian woman, they say our know-it-all heads stuck in the Danube", but I don't remember it completely.

After the war, Herman never talked about her, he said, watch the movies, there are a lot of books, but I don't want to remember.
On the western front, he ended the war in Vienna, but they were quickly transferred to China to fight Japan.
There he ended the war in Chan-Chup, was demobilized in the spring of 1947
He fought in the troops of R.Ya. Malinovsky.

In 1974 I was on a tour in Hungary.
When I later came to Chelyabinsk, Herman began to ask me where he was, he called Hungarian cities and towns with difficult names, which part of them took.
I was very surprised that after 30 years he remembers them so well.
He replied that when you crawl half of Europe on your belly under bullets, you will remember.
He didn't say anything else.

The last time I was in Chelyabinsk was in 2004 and I visited my uncle.
He told me in his mood that after the hospital he was sent to Stalingrad.
It so happened that many relatives fought in Stalingrad.
Most died.

Herman said that he really wanted to liberate his native Kiev, heard that the Germans severely destroyed it.
2nd Ukrainian Front liberated Ukraine to the south.
He said that when crossing the Dnieper he did not hope to swim to the other side alive: the water was boiling from bullets and shells, the dead were floating around.
In response to my inquiries, he did not say anything more.
Herman died on 17.12.2011.
All his life he worked at the plant as a foreman of locksmiths, at the same plant from which he was called to the front.

I was in my native Kiev in May 1985, then I was simply attracted to the places of my childhood .................

- And what, Keira Knightley will not come? I asked sarcastically.

“She already congratulated me in the morning,” he boasted. - When, brought me coffee in bed, completely naked.

- Nice dream, Mason, - I patted this satisfied face on the shoulder approvingly.

Mason walked over me with an appraising glance.

- Something is wrong?

- I told you about a gorgeous evening? About chic outfits?

“Actually, yes,” I crossed my arms across my chest in resentment.

- Gorgeous, from the word chic, Sophie!

- And I look like who? I raised an eyebrow.

“Like a farm girl running away from a swineherd!

I almost choked on air.

- Sorry, what?

- This is definitely not what we need, - he pulled the tape and let my hair down, making volume at the roots with his hands. - I hope you don't have lice.

I punched him in the stomach with my fist.

- I have no lice!

- I just in case asked, - Mason calmly worked with my hair. - Like this!

“I feel like a doll used instead of a broom,” I continued to grumble.

- It would be better if it was so. Then your hair would have at least some purpose.

I stuck my tongue out at him and began to be defiantly angry. My signature facial expression.

“Don't bother, Sophie. I'm immune to your grimaces today.

After talking with Mason, I let go of all my worries about the lake. But he replaced them with others. Now, it seemed to me that I looked bad, and this is not permissible, since there will be many sexy girls on the shore. Although, I felt very comfortable. Better not to draw too much attention to yourself.

An hour later, we were already approaching the shore, where high fires were burning, and music was playing very loudly. The weather was quite warm, which further heated up the crowd. Girls in short skirts demonstrated their dancing skills, and the guys supported them with loud shouts. I felt fun begin to rise in me.

- Here you go, - Mason gave me a glass of cola. - I'm sure you won't even feel the whiskey.

- It started, - I threw back my head and in one gulp drained the contents of the cardboard cup.

- That's what I understand, - my friend looked at me enthusiastically and did exactly the same.

My throat burned pleasantly, my head began to spin a little, and this was only after the first glass. Lately, I have been in constant tension, and for me it was a kind of sedative.

Mason and I repeated the already used amount, and both of us became noticeably prettier.

For a while, we were just silent and watched the young people walking.

- Maybe we can go closer to the crowd? - finally suggested Mason.

“With joy,” I replied and realized that my speech was slightly impaired. Another working part of the brain said that I should slow down with alcohol.

As soon as we got to the fire, my eyes collided with it.

He stood surrounded by long-legged girls, but immediately caught my presence. Lights danced in his eyes, and then he rewarded me with his trademark smile. Even alcohol did not relieve me of the cold that I felt again.

I grabbed Mason's arm and led him wherever they were looking, if only those black eyes would not see me. And I diligently tried to blend in the crowd.

- There you are! - Rush shouted behind me and ran up to us. - Mind if we join? I want to hide from Molly, she decided that I shouldn't drink alcohol! I don’t understand what came over her, ”he said.

We exchanged glances with Mason, once again making sure that this couple is connected by something. And Molly wasted no time!

Rush was not alone. The red-haired guy who accompanied him greeted us sweetly. He would look very strange: a pale face and large bruises under his eyes that even freckles could not hide it.

“My name is Eric,” he introduced himself, and then said that he went for a drink and disappeared into the woods.

Mason poured his remaining whiskey into our glasses and asked to raise them up, as he had a wonderful speech prepared.

- What about Eric? I asked. - We will not wait for him?

“He's coming later,” Rush explained.

Mason showed his displeasure by stamping his foot strongly. We interrupted him.

I liked it so much when he played offended himself. It looked so cute considering that Mason was a big guy.

- Sorry, Mason ... Continue.

- I want to raise these glasses, so that this evening was the most breathtaking evening in our life. We are graduates! We must break away so that tomorrow we would be ashamed of it! To the dregs!

Text provided by Liters LLC.

You can safely pay for the book with a Visa, MasterCard, Maestro bank card, from a mobile phone account, from a payment terminal, in an MTS or Svyaznoy salon, through PayPal, WebMoney, Yandex.Money, QIWI Wallet, bonus cards or in another way convenient for you.