By the time the rallying horn sounded, Seryosha was only halfway through his letter.

He hurriedly wrote at the end of the letter, "I must go, love your mother," and folded the letter.

At this time, the secretary pushed the door in, and roared in a thick voice: "What are you rubbing, little girl! Run, run, run! It's a big day! Hurry, hurry, hurry! ”

Seryosha jumped out of bed, put the letter in his pocket, picked up the equipment that had already been placed beside the bed, and ran out of the door with his comrades in the same dormitory. As soon as Seryosha came out of the barracks, he heard a faint thunder in the sky, and when he looked up, he saw that the sky was blue, and there were no clouds at all. Only then did Seryosha realize that it was the sound of artillery units firing.

Seryosha ran into the line and stood up and began to put his gear on. Mishka, who entered the team one step behind him, whispered to Seryosha while buckling his belt: "I bet that the buddies of the first wave of attack are now following Xu Jin's barrage, and there must be another unlucky guy who will be sent to the sky by the artillery masters." ”

In the Russian infantry unit, there has always been a saying that the barrage of Xu Jin, who is an artillery master, will definitely kill a few unlucky people, no one knows where this statement came from, maybe the soldiers who were stunned by the shells in the last war took the artillery fire of the Germans' counterattack as a mistake by their own artillery. Anyway, this statement was born, and it is widely accepted as truth.

Seryosha was glad that his troops were tasked with expanding their gains after the assault force had broken through, which meant that they did not need to brave Polish machine-gun and artillery fire to attack the fortified fortress, but he was still nervous. Alekseevich, a veteran of the company, who had fought in the Turkish War, usually looked at Seryosha and these young men contemptuously whenever he drank, and said in a deep voice: "In the end, only twelve people came back from my company, and the rest died under the guns of the Germans who were damned iron flies." ”

The Iron Fly was just one of the countless ferocious weapons of the Germans in Alekseevich's mouth, and he would change them each time to annihilate his company.

Seryosha turned his head to look for Alexievich in the ranks, but did not find it, and just then he heard the chief of the department shouting: "Alexey! Damn it! Who saw that old slippery head? ”

"He's not feeling well, he's gone to the military doctor!" Someone replied.

The secretary scolded and turned and walked towards the barracks, as if intending to pull out the old slippery head in his mouth, and the command came from the far right end of the line: "Turn right!" ”

The company commander standing at the front of the line immediately shouted: "Turn right!" ”

The order to turn right continued to be passed down to the company on the left, and the other companies sounded like an echo.

When Seryosha turned around, he saw the secretary scolding and returning to his place. At this time, Mishka said: "I heard that Alekseevich's company was completely annihilated by the Germans, and he escaped by finding an excuse to sneak to the rear a few days before he was completely annihilated. ”

Seryosha didn't speak, just tensed his face.

At this time, Gregory, who was walking in front, turned around and grinned at Seryosha: "What, are you afraid of muddy legs?" ”

"Shut up, you're not coming to be an infantryman, Grisha." Mishka called out Grigory's nickname, and Grigory especially did not like to be called by his nickname, supposedly because it reminded him of his first love who was taken away by the officer's old man - this story was known to the whole Tatar village, and then the Tatar infantry and the infantry from other Cossack villages near Vishchensk drank alcohol, and the whole Vishensk Cossack knew the story of Grigory's past.

"That's different, I have horses." Gregory was angry, "It's a beautiful Don hippopotamus, and I've been taking care of it since it was born!" ”

"But you're still an infantryman, and you've become a mud leg." Mishka smiled at Gregory's hippie face, "Because the cavalry has been eliminated!" The high-headed horse eats a lot, but he doesn't have the opportunity to do it, so he is eliminated! The tradition of the rich man's son being a cavalryman and a hired man's son being an infantryman is also over! If you want me to say, you can buy a chariot at your own expense and send you to the newly formed chariot unit, and then you can continue to call me Mud Legs, and you can be reviewed by Miss Prime Minister. ”

"You! You damned pan-humanist! Grigory whispered viciously, "One day I will report you to the Chief!" ”

"Then I can go home, I don't have to go to war, you can report it." Mishka said disapprehantly.

Seryosha knew that Grigory would not report it, and he felt that it was dishonorable to do so, according to Seryosha, Grigory probably preferred to teach Mishka a lesson in a duel or something like that, but as soon as he made this request, Mishka would move out of "I, a poor man, who is not qualified to fight a duel with the youngest son of the Merekhov family, who has a large house with four large tin roofs at the head of the village", and then learn to "coo", which is said to imitate the sound of the iron rooster on the roof of Grigory's house.

Grigory stared at Mishka for a moment, then turned away from him, but Seryosha could tell from Grigory's footsteps that he was very unhappy.

In fact, Seryosha was quite sympathetic to Gregory, he did not do anything bad, just because his family was a rich family in a Tatar village, he was targeted by Mishka everywhere.

However, Seryosha, who was also born in a Tatar village, would not express this sympathy, because his father was not a Cossack, and all the Cossacks, including the Grigory family, looked down on their family, and only the poorer of the Cossacks, such as Mishka, would treat them as equals.

Seryosha did not know if Mishka was a pan-humanist, but he himself confirmed that he had obtained some pan-humanist propaganda materials, which he had only looked at and smoked - he was afraid, afraid that he would become a pan-humanist after a few more glances.

No, he's going to be a pan-humanist, and he's only scared by looking at the beginning of the propaganda with such conviction.

This doctrine is so demagogic that it is no wonder that it is called a virus by the scholars of Petrograd.

Just as he was thinking about it, Seryosha suddenly noticed that the sound of the cannon had stopped, and everything around him seemed so quiet, and the whole world was only the sound of the footsteps of the procession.

At this time, Mishka spoke again: "I heard that the Germans have all used their cars, and I envy them, at least they don't have to carry heavy ammunition supplies and other things that I don't know what they are used to march." ”

"It is impossible for all the infantry to have a car to sit in," Seryosha finally spoke, "even if the German army is not as large as ours, but it is still a few million people, where did so many cars come from?" ”

Before he could finish speaking, a low humming sound entered Seryosha's ears, and the sound came from the sky, and he looked up and soon saw a neat line of planes flying from Russia behind them, over their heads.

Someone in the front of the group began to cheer, and soon the cheers spread to Seryosha and them, Seryosha also waved his hat and cheered to the iron birds in the sky, while Mishka beside him shouted: "Blow them up!" Let them taste the bombardment too! ”

It seems that Mishka is not a pan-humanist, Seryosha thought.

At that moment, Seryosha saw a plane flying above him suddenly burst into flames, and it dragged a long cloud of smoke down to the ground, and the wings fell off like that.

Then Seryosha saw two black phantoms streak across his field of vision at a very high speed, and then disappeared into the blind spot formed by the bushes on both sides of the road.

Immediately afterwards, Seryosha heard an explosion in the distance, and it seemed that the plane that had fallen had hit the ground.

The planes that had just been lined up in the sky were scattered, as if they were hiding from something terrible.

Seryosha saw another plane dragging a trail of flames and smoke across the field of vision.

"Damn it!" "I don't see what they're attacking!" As if to echo his words, a fighter plane with the insignia of the Russian Air Force flew hundreds of meters above them, and then a fighter with a yellow nose and a black iron cross on its wing rushed into Seryosha's field of vision and fired at the fighter with the double-headed eagle insignia.

Seryosha watched as the Russian fighter plane was smashed into the air and fell into the bushes on the left side of the marching column, and the fireballs generated by the explosion rose into the air over the treetops of the bushes.

The German plane flew away, and at this time the company commander rode along the line, shouting as he ran: "Don't stop, keep going!" Sergei! Organize a few people to go out into the woods and see if there's anything they can help with! ”

Seryosha moved forward with the others, but his eyes were always fixed in the direction of the smoke rising from the bushes. Gradually, he approached the crash site, and through the gap in the trunk of the tree he could see the fragments of the plane scattered in the woods. Finally, he saw the main body of the flaming warplane, which looked like a cigar stuck in the ground.

Then Seryosha saw bloodstains, and the pilot may have jumped out of the cabin at the last moment, but this apparently did not save his life, and he lay on the snow, the red liquid flowing from his body staining the thin layer of snow on the ground.

Seryosha saw the priest of the company standing in front of the pilot's corpse, drawing a cross and giving a sermon, he could not hear the priest's voice, and he could not guess what he had said.

The last time Seryosha watched the pastor preach to the dead was at the funeral of his mother-in-law.

"Hey, do you smell it?" Mishka suddenly stabbed Seryosha in the waist, "The smell of burning gasoline, the smell of burnt rubber, the smell of blood, and the smell of gunpowder after it was fired, these are mixed together, and it is the smell of war." ”

Seryosha did not answer.

He felt that he would never get used to the smell for the rest of his life.