The story of the famous song, which was born on November 27, 1941 near Istria.

Correspondents of the newspaper of the Western Front "Red Army Truth" arrived on that day with an editorial assignment in the 9th Guard Army Division.

After passing by the division’s command post, they jumped by a truck at the 258-th (22-th Guard) rifle regiment in the village of Kashino. This was precisely at the time when German tanks, passing through a loot near the village of Darna, cut off the commanding post of the regiment from the battalions.

Among them, in this sudden surrounding, was the coroner Alexei Surkov.
Further from his face:

It quickly darkened. Two of our tanks, smashing the snow dust, went to the forest. The soldiers and commanders who remained in the village collapsed in a small blinds equipped somewhere in the back of the KP at the commander of the regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Sukanov.

The photographer and I hid from the dense mortar and automatic fire on the stairs leading to the blending - he wanted to have time to take pictures of the battle.
The Germans were already in the village.
And sowing in two or three surviving houses, they were shooting at us continuously.

So what, will we still be sitting in the blend? - said the head of staff of the regiment captain I.K. The Great.
Having talked about something with the commander of the regiment, he turned to everyone who was in the blinds: - Well, whoever has "pocket artillery", let's!

Having gathered a dozen and a half hand grenades, including taking out my two promised "limousines", which I kept for the chance, the captain, pulling the belt on the telogreek, came out of the blender.

And cover it! He gave up briefly.

We immediately opened fire on the Hitlerites. The Big Polls. The grenades. The explosion, another explosion, and the house became quiet. The captain went to the other house, then to the third. It all happened again, according to a predetermined scenario.
The enemy fire was reduced, but the Germans did not stop. When he returned to the blender, he was already drowning.

Everyone was organized towards the river. They crossed the ice under ammunition. The Hitlerites did not leave us with their "grace" even when we were already on the opposite shore. From the ruptures of the mines, the frozen earth flew in all directions, painfully beating the helmets.

When they entered the new village, it seems Ulyanovo, they stopped. The worst happened here. The chief of the engineering service suddenly says to Suhanov:
- Comrade Colonel, and you and I passed through our mine field!

And then I saw that Sukanov, a man who usually did not lose his spirit for a second, was pale like snow.
He knew that if someone had struck the mine during this retreat, none of us would have survived.

Then, when we got a little mastery in the new place, the commander of the regiment’s headquarters, Captain Velichkin, the one who threw grenades to enemy machine guns, sat down to eat soup. He ate two tablespoons and, we see, dropped the tablespoon and fell asleep.
The man did not sleep for four days.
And when a phone call came from the headquarters of the division - by that time the communication was restored - we could not wake the captain, no matter how hard we tried.

Impressed by the day under Istra, I wrote a letter to my wife.
Where he wrote sixteen "home" lines of poetry, which he did not intend to publish, and especially to pass on to anyone to write music...

Poems "Fire beats in a tight mushroom" would have remained part of the letter, if in February 1942 did not come to Moscow from the evacuation, composer Konstantin Lystov did not come to the front edition and did not ask "something to write a song."

And then I, fortunately, remembered the poems written at home, found them in the notebook and gave them to Listov, being absolutely sure that his conscience was cleaned, but the songs from this lyrical poem will not come out.

She ran through the lines with her eyes, wandered something uncertain and left. He left and forgot everything. But a week later, the composer again appeared in the edition, took a guitar from the photographer Mikhail Savin and sang his new song, calling it "In the Earth".
Everyone, free from work "in the room", holding their breath, listened to the song. The song seemed to have worked.

In the evening, Misha Savin after dinner asked me for a text and, accompanying on the guitar, performed a song. And immediately it became clear that the song "will go" if the melody was remembered from the first performance.

The song really went. On all fronts - from Sevastopol to Leningrad and the Polar. Some front moralists thought that the lines: "It is not easy for me to get to you, and to death - four steps" - falling down.
It was advised that the death be cut off or moved away from the cave.

I was sorry to change words. They conveyed what was experienced, felt there, in the battle, and it was too late to spoil the song, it "goed".
As you know, you can’t throw a word out of the song.

About the fact that with the song "wise", the warriors learned. In my messy army archive there is a letter signed by six tank guards. Having said a good word to the song and its authors, the tankers write that they heard that someone didn't like the line "to death - four steps".

The guards expressed such a vicious wish: "Write for these people that four thousand English miles before death, and leave us as it is - we know how many steps before it, to death."

So, from the events of one heavy battle in the village of Kashino and a chain of happy coincidences, and a legendary song appeared.