Shooting, shooting and shooting.

When I come to my hometown, I always go to the cemetery. After cleaning the graves of relatives, I must stop at one of the tombs. Where he was buried, as he was called. Gowsa Vicenty Yakovlevich.

On the monument - a photo of the grandfather with "Budenovsky" moustaches. Photo of a legend.

In 1942, at the age of nineteen, he joined the partisan squad. After the liberation of Belarus, he was summoned to the RKKA, the war ended in Berlin in the rank of sergeant, commander of 57-mm guns. Two times wounded.

As part of the unit, he received four thanks from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (for Warsaw, the liberation of Poland, Oder and Berlin) and Zhukov for the assault on the Reichstag. Participant of the Victory Parade.

In the village he was respected, and we, Patsanva, at every convenient occasion, were full of questions:

Tell me, what did you do in the war?

I shot, my grandchildren, and I shot.

And by whom?

By the Germans, their mother, by the Germans.

Shoot the tanks?

And after them, their mother, and after them.

Hurt a lot?

I didn’t think, their mother didn’t think.

At this conversation, as a rule, ended, and the old man quietly went to the house. My daughter said she was crying.

The fact that one of his awards was for the heavily wounded battery commander brought out of the battlefield, I learned much later, when Vicenty Yakovlevich was no longer alive. At the same time, his daughter showed thanks to Stalin and Zhukov, two orders of Glory, two orders of the Patriotic War, the order of the Red Star, medals for Warsaw, Berlin, squirts for wounds.

Grandfather Vinak never wore awards, like all the veterans in our village.

They never talked about war, did not cheer about feats, and did not consider themselves heroes. And only once a year, on May 9, the elderly gathered in the park. Without medals and orders, without celebrations and pathos. They sat in the bars and drank silently.

For those who “shoot, grandchildren, shoot.”
Author: Andrey Avdey