Last Witnesses : An Oral History of the Children of World War II

“CLOSE YOUR EYES, SONNY…DON’T LOOK…”

Volodia Parabkovich TWELVE YEARS OLD. NOW A PENSIONER.

I grew up without mama…

I’ve never remembered myself as a child…My mama died when I was seven. I lived with my aunt. I was a cowherd, I stocked firewood, drove horses to the night pastures. There was enough to do in the kitchen garden. Then in winter we went sliding on wooden sleds and skating on homemade skates, also wooden, edged with metal and tied to our bast shoes with strings, and also went skiing on skis made of planks and discarded coopers’ rivets. I made it all myself.

To this day I remember the first ankle boots my father bought me. And how upset I was when I scratched them with a twig in the forest. I was so sorry that I thought: it would be better if I cut my foot—it would heal. I wore those boots leaving Orsha with my father when the fascist airplanes bombed the city.

Outside the city they shot at us point-blank. People fell to the ground…In the sand, in the grass…“Close your eyes, sonny…Don’t look,” my father begged. I was afraid both to look up—the sky was black with planes—or at the ground—the dead lay everywhere. A plane passed close to us…Father also fell and didn’t get up. I sat over him: “Papa, open your eyes…Papa, open your eyes…” Some people shouted, “Germans!” and pulled me after them. And I couldn’t grasp that my father would never get up again and that I had to leave him like that in the dust on the road. There was no blood on him anywhere, he simply lay silently. People pulled me away by force, but for many days I walked and kept looking back, waiting for father to catch up with me. I woke up during the night, awakened by his voice…I couldn’t believe I had no father anymore. So I was left alone, in my one woolen suit.

After wandering for a long time…I rode a train, went on foot…I was taken to an orphanage in the town of Melekess in the Kuibyshev region. I tried to escape to the front several times, but each time it failed. They caught me and brought me back. But, as they say, no luck can be good luck. While cutting firewood in the forest, I lost control of the ax, it bounced back and hit me on a finger of my right hand. The teacher bandaged me with her kerchief and sent me to the town clinic.

On our way to the orphanage, along with Sasha Liapin, who had been sent to accompany me, I noticed a man in a sailor’s cap with ribbons, who was hanging an announcement on the board next to the town Komsomol Committee. We came closer and saw that it was the rules of application to the navy’s cadet school on the Solovetsky Islands.^* This school was open only to volunteers. Priority of acceptance was given to the children of sailors and the wards of orphanages. I can hear that sailor’s voice as if it was happening today: “So you want to become sailors?”

“We’re from an orphanage,” we said.

“Then go in to the Komsomol Committee and write an application letter.”

I can’t describe to you our rapture at that moment. It was the direct way to the front. By then I didn’t believe I’d be able to avenge my father! That I’d have time to get to the war.

We went in to the town Komsomol Committee and wrote applications. A few days later we were already standing before a medical commission. One of its members looked me over: “He’s very small and skinny.”

Another, in an officer’s uniform, sighed. “Never mind, he’ll grow up.”

They changed our clothes, having some trouble finding the right sizes. When I saw myself in the mirror in a sailor’s uniform, in a sailor’s cap, I was happy. A day later we were already sailing on a boat to the Solovetsky Islands.

Everything was new. Unusual. It’s late at night…We stand on deck…The sailors urge us to go to bed.

“Go to the crew’s quarters, boys. It’s warm there.”

Early in the morning we saw the monastery shining in the sun and the golden hues of the forest. These were the Solovetsky Islands, where the first school of naval cadets in the country was about to open. But before beginning to study, we had to build the school—more precisely, the dugouts. The ground of Solovki is nothing but stone. We didn’t have enough saws, axes, shovels. We learned to do everything by hand: dig hard soil, cut centennial trees, root up stumps, do carpentry. After work we went to rest in cold tents, with beds lined with fir branches, with mattresses and pillows stuffed with grass. We covered ourselves with overcoats. We did our own laundry, the water was mixed with ice…We wept—our hands hurt so.

In 1942…We took a military oath. We were issued sailors’ caps with the inscription “Naval Cadet School,” but, to our great regret, not with shoulder-length ribbons, but with a little bow on the right side. They gave us rifles. In the beginning of 1943…I was assigned to serve on the guards destroyer Intelligent. Everything was new to me: the crests of the waves the ship’s bow cut through, the “phosphorus” stripe left by the propellers…It was breathtaking…

“Are you scared, sonny?” the commander asked.

“No,” I said, not thinking for a second. “It’s beautiful!”

“It would be beautiful, if it weren’t for the war,” the commander said and looked away for some reason.

I was fourteen years old…

* The Solovetsky Islands (also known collectively as Solovki), in the White Sea, were the location of a fortified monastery founded in 1436, then of a notorious Soviet hard-labor camp from 1926 to 1939. A naval academy was set up there just prior to the start of WWII.