Well, once such a “spiritual” topic went on...
April of 45. and Germany. My grandfather is 46 years old. Civil has passed.
On the front from the autumn of 41. Commander of a separate squadron.
The squadron woke up for the night in some hutor. There are no owners. They escaped.
The soldiers found a locked door in the basement. And there are salts, cork-collars. And a 20-litre bottle with a sharp smell of liquid.
My grandfather smelled something wrong. “He” does not smell like that. Drinking is prohibited.
arranged for bed.
At night, someone did not endure, stood up quietly, attached to the bottle. The clock, it turns out, also blasted in the bottle before leaving. “For the heat.”

Eight bodies in the morning. There was methyl alcohol in the bottle.
Grandpa in court. 8 years of camp. A year for each.

Standing at the headquarters. Without a belt, but with a convoy. Waiting for the car in the rear and further by stage.
Comedy arrives at Willis. Grandfather under his beginning from the 41, when he was still a combat.
I found out.
What are you here?
Yes, this is the case.
Noah, I guess...
I talked to the bosses. They change the grandfather 8 years of camps for 3 months of penalty.
They go to the penitents. And there was the palba and the drunkard - came Kalinin's decree on dissolving the penalty.
“Thank you all, everyone is free.”
Bring the grandfather back to his part. What to do next is unclear, they decide.
Here is victory. Not before him at all.
And he was still wet and frozen, while in the body half-turns to the penalty riders. Inflammation of the lungs.
They were sent to the hospital, from there back home, to the village near Tula.

My grandfather lived 87 years. He died in 1986 (I was serving in the Army at that time).
He was not an official veteran and did not receive any benefits.
Neither medal for victory over Germany, nor anniversary, nor the Order of the Patriotic War in 1985.

All these years, the grandfather was afraid that he would be remembered and forced to serve his sentence.
It didn’t light up in the offices.

There is a medal in front of me. Green tape with a red strip. Known to the smallest details the faces of the fighters in the army. tanks and aircraft.
Over the past 40 years, I have looked at this image many times.
Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad.
That’s all my grandfather had from the war, and I have from him.
My grandfather gave it to me when I was 7 years old.