Under enemy fire, in the winter cold, wounded - he continued on his way, thinking about those who were waiting for him on the other side of Lake Ladoga. In the winter of 1941, Maxim Tverdokhleb was carrying New Year's gifts to the children of besieged Leningrad along the Road of Life.
Maxim Tverdokhleb during the war years served in the autobattalion, carried cargo along Ladoga, saving hundreds of residents of besieged Leningrad. The path along the Road of Life was full of mortal risk: enemy bombing, thin ice, many days of driver fatigue - danger lurked everywhere.
Maxim has been on the verge of death more than once. Once, an enemy shell hit his lorry loaded with ammunition. The burning car was miraculously extinguished, but while the driver was fighting the fire, he did not notice that he had burned his hands badly - he discovered this only when he got behind the wheel again: “... hands - like claws of boiled cancer, all red, and pain, as if roasted at the stake." On that day, he delivered the cargo, after which he ended up in the medical battalion.
He had a chance, as he put it himself, and "to be baptized in an ice font." He was carrying flour from Kobona across the fragile ice. Trying to maneuver under the Nazi bombing, he fell into a hole - the car quickly sank to the bottom, and the driver miraculously managed to open the door and emerge from the icy water. Anti-aircraft gunners who were nearby arrived to help, but Maxim was in no hurry to accept their help: the first thing was to save flour. “At that time, every gram of flour was just as precious and needed by the people of Leningrad, like shells, like cartridges on the front line.”
At the end of December 1941, on New Year's Eve, he was carrying gifts for Leningrad children. Plywood boxes with the inscription "To the Children of Besieged Leningrad", filled with tangerines, were loaded into a lorry.
On January 1, 1942, we, students, were given invitation cards to the Christmas tree at the Drama Theater. Gorky. During the performance, the alarm was announced several times, the performance was interrupted, we all went down to the bomb shelter. After the performance, the tables were set. Each of us was given a small cutlet with buckwheat porridge.
T. Zhurina
Tverdokhleb overcame halfway without obstacles, trying to deliver the cargo ahead of schedule. Somewhere in the distance, the roar of enemy fire echoed - the Nazis methodically fired at the track. Then everything went silent.
From the contents of the gift, I remember linseed cake sweets, a gingerbread and two tangerines. At that time it was a very good meal.
P. Danilov
Nothing foreshadowed trouble, when suddenly our anti-aircraft gunners thundered - an unkind sign. A moment later, Nazi planes appeared in the sky over Ladoga. Roaring their engines menacingly, they opened fire on a moving target. There is nowhere to hide on the icy road - everything is visible at a glance. Increasing speed, Tverdokhleb tried to get away from the fire. One maneuver succeeded, but the enemy returned again. This time, the lead pierced the cabin, knocked off part of the steering wheel, and the driver was wounded in the arm.
January 1, 1942. Today has come New Year. What he brings us is a mystery shrouded in darkness. When last night I said that the old year was leaving, they answered me: "To hell with this year, it would have to fall through the ground." And indeed, I will never forget the same opinion in 1941.
B. Kapranov
The Vultures left the smoking car, and Maxim, taking a breath, tried to start his lorry. And she started. “I tried to steer, the car obeys. You can continue the journey, ”the driver recalled. And it was not easy to continue the journey: without windshield a thirty-degree frost burned his face, a smoking radiator made it difficult to see, his hand was haunted. But it was impossible to give up - he was carrying gifts to children who needed a holiday in order to forget about the horrors of war for at least a minute.
It seemed to me that on this day the war was to stop, to end. It's the New Year!
V. Korotkova
On that day Maxim Tverdokhleb delivered the cargo on time.
The end of January is two dates. January 29, 1932 was released the first "lorry", GAZ-AA. 12 years later, on January 27, 1944, the Soviet troops lifted the blockade of Leningrad. Coincidentally, it was the “one and a half” that helped Leningrad wait for this moment.
Don't turn the steering wheel
Something bothers me...
Close to the earth
Well, what are you, half-ass?
A. Rosenbaum, "On the road of life"
What is the Road of Life, I learned in kindergarten. The teacher took a large book off the shelf, and on one of its spreads I saw a black-and-white photograph: cars go into the distance on white snow, gradually becoming black dots. Probably on the same day I got an idea of what the blockade of Leningrad was like. This is how all Soviet children learned the details of that war - quite early.
But something passes by or is forgotten over time. For example, while preparing this publication, I came across a post about " famous symbol war" - the diary of Tanya Savicheva. And I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about it. Or do I not remember, because once, in fear, I preferred to forget? Sometimes it is very useful to bypass the defense mechanisms of consciousness and remember such things. Therefore, I decided to collect here some stories about the Road of Life. So that someone refreshes in memory, someone recognizes - and everyone remembers.
For starters, a little materiel. We have already addressed the topic of the blockade and told in detail what automotive technology helped to defend hard times. In addition to the 40-horsepower “lorry” GAZ-AA or exactly the same GAZ-MM, but with a more powerful, 50-horsepower engine, the no less famous “three-ton” ZIS-5 (aka “Zakhar Ivanovich”) served here, and the American lend-lease Studebaker, but there was a majority - light vehicles were better suited for driving on ice.
A significant number of them were equipped with wood-burning gas generators. What is such a "polundra" in operation, you can find out. In the “basic” version, the “lorry” was powered by low-octane gasoline, the compression ratio was only 4.25. Tractor naphtha was often poured into the tank, and summer time- lighting kerosene. Max speed in real conditions, it rarely exceeded 40 km / h, and this was on a flat surface, and not on snow and ice, which will be discussed later.
In wartime, the equipment of the “lorry” was noticeably simplified: the GAZ-MM-V modification did not have front brakes, the wings were made of thin roofing iron (they are easy to distinguish from pre-war ones in a more primitive form), there was only one headlight, left, the roof became canvas , and the doors - wooden, or even completely replaced by "curtains" from the same tarpaulin. Is it worth mentioning that the heater in the cabin of the "polundry" was absent in principle?
And for two winters, 1941-1942 and 1942-1943, drivers worked on such equipment, who delivered food and fuel on the ice of Lake Ladoga to besieged Leningrad, and people exhausted by hunger and cold were taken back. The blockade began on September 8, 1941, when the Germans took the forces defending the city Soviet army into the ring, and until the end of November, communication with Leningrad (import of products and export of people) took place by water under constant bombardment by German aircraft.
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In November, the organization of the “ice road along the water route Cape Osinovets - the lighthouse of Kareji” began, on the 15th they began to examine the ice, as a result of which it turned out that it had not yet been established everywhere. However, already on the 22nd, the first attempt was made to cross the freezing lake in cars - 60 cars left Leningrad, taking people out of the blockade ring, and the next day they returned to the city with food.
But later, especially in autumn and spring, the cars often went under water. Various attempts have been made to minimize these losses. At first, cars were partially replaced by carts with horses. As for the “one and a half”, they were not fully loaded, tying the loaded sled-sleds behind. And the drivers left the doors to the cab open - so there was an opportunity to jump onto the ice if the car started to sink.
In addition, the minimum amount of fuel was poured into the tanks, exactly one way, so the weight of the car turned out to be somewhat lower, and the losses in the event of a car death were not so great. The drivers of cars walking in the convoy were ordered to keep a distance of 100 meters from the one in front and, under the threat of execution, it was strictly forbidden to stop if the neighboring car went under water - in order to avoid a repetition of the situation.
Lake Ladoga is one of the largest in Europe, with a length in different directions from 136 to 207 km and an average depth of 51 meters. There are real storms here - one of them in September 1941, even before the emergence of the Road of Life, sank two barges that were taking about 800 people out of the already surrounded Leningrad, about 500 of whom died. So in the winter because strong winds there is practically no even ice on the lake.
In the photo: Delivery of products on Lake Ladoga (September 1942)
indented by hummocks Ladoga Road life was officially called the military highway No. 101. Its length was about 44 kilometers, and about 30 of them were on the ice of the lake. The road consisted of two lanes of 10 meters each with a distance of 100-150 meters from each other. But it was not a static object - the margin of ice strength was enough for an average of two weeks, after which the track actually had to be laid again, at a considerable distance from the previous one. Each driver driving onto the ice was accompanied by a sign: “Each one and a half car carries food for 10,000 rations, for 10,000 people. Driver, save these lives!
At night, columns of cars were blacked out: the drivers turned off their headlights and guided themselves by special poles, traffic controllers with bat lamps, oncoming cars and horse-drawn carts. Visibility was therefore very low similar conditions it's hard to tell if it's a puddle of melt water in front of your hood, or a ravine without a bottom, a small crack in front of which it's enough to slow down a little, or a dangerous hummock. Often the car just flew at speed under the ice floe, without any chance for the driver and possible passengers.
During the first two weeks of the existence of the Highway Road No. 101, 157 cars went under the ice. For the entire first winter - about 1,000. In the second winter, losses were significantly less - just over 100 cars, but in the end, every third "lorry" that worked on the Road of Life drowned. Several decades after the war, they were taken from the bottom of Lake Ladoga. They say that even now, if you fly over Ladoga, in some places black rectangles are visible through the water - the skeletons of the "one and a half" that lay on the bottom. Some of them became mass graves - there are cases when people weakened by the blockade could not quickly leave the body and drowned.
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Every 5 km on the road there should have been nutrient and heating points, however, some eyewitnesses say that sanitary tents and heating points were located at least 7-8 kilometers from each other. And in addition to the danger of falling under the water, the drivers of the "one and a half" were accompanied on the Road of Life by another - to run into shelling or a raid by enemy aircraft. In the winter of 1941-1942, Soviet fighters made 143 air battles over the lake, and 51 fascist aircraft were shot down by air defense.
In that first winter of the existence of the Road of Life in the vicinity of Leningrad, there were severe frosts - on the night of December 31, -51.7 ° С was recorded. In the "Leningrad Poem" Olga Berggolts described a case when one of the drivers on a flight had a stalled engine. He was about to try to start it, but his hands were so stiff from the cold that he could barely lift them off the wheel. In order to somehow warm his hands and be able to revive the engine, he doused his palms with gasoline and set it on fire: “And now - he / Wetted his hands in gasoline, set them on fire from the engine, / And the repair quickly moved / in the flaming hands of the driver. / Forward! How blisters whine, / palms froze to mittens. / But he will deliver the bread, drive it / to the bakery before dawn.”
This story is based on real events, there are eyewitness accounts: Anna Pavlovna Ivanova (Kulikova) worked as a paramedic on the Road of Life. She said that one day, near the sanitary tent where she was the hostess, they stopped a car whose driver steered with his elbows, because his hands were burned - in order to grab the crank of a stalled engine, he set fire to own hands. He started up and drove to the sanitary tent, but left the cab and accepted help only when he handed over the car to the driver on duty along with the cargo for Leningrad - bags of flour.
And when a snowstorm began on Ladoga, the driver could easily lose orientation in space. Once, on Ivan Kudelsky's "lorry", the ignition went off, and while he was fiddling with candles, the column in which he was moving disappeared from view, and a snowstorm arose. Ivan managed to start the engine, but devoid of landmarks, he came instead of Leningrad to Shlisselburg, which was "under the Germans"! Fortunately, the sentry he met hesitated for a second, and the driver was able to tie him up and deliver him to ours, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star.
Freezing, getting lost in a snowstorm, was easy for the driver. At the beginning of the winter of 1941, Leonid Barkovich went on one of his first flights along the Road of Life from Leningrad with his father, who was also a driver. Along the way, he, like our previous heroes, suffered a breakdown. Father in his car, along with the rest of the column, went ahead. Leonid successfully repaired, moved on, and already approaching the end point, he noticed a frozen truck in the dark. It was his father's car - he did not have enough sparingly measured fuel, and he almost froze to death. But he was saved - the son took the truck in tow and dragged it to the end of the route.
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According to another eyewitness - also one of the drivers who worked on the Road of Life - Alexander Nikolaevich Shabov, the hardest things were not jumping from a sinking car onto the ice, not shelling, not fighting the cold and not several flights a day. The hardest thing was at the evacuation center on the way back from Leningrad - not to give food to the emaciated people who had just been evacuated. After all, they could take food in very small portions, under the supervision of a doctor, otherwise a quick death awaited them. It was especially difficult to “negotiate” with the children.
The military blockade of Leningrad lasted 872 days, from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944. The road of life, taking into account the periods of navigation, when people and goods were transported by water, existed from September 12, 1941 to March 1943. If we talk specifically about the Ice Road of Life, then it was served by about 4,500 cars (at a time, from 1,200 to 3,000 cars were occupied at different times), of which about 3,000 were GAZ-AA and GAZ-MM lorries, about 1,000 - "three-ton" ZIS-5. Among the rest were 40 ZIS-8 city buses from the Moscow Bus Expedition, which arrived in Ladoga in January 1942 and removed 69,000 blockade survivors from Leningrad, losing about a dozen buses in the process.
On January 25, 1942, for the first time in Leningrad, the daily norm of bread per person was increased - from 125 grams it was raised to 250. This became possible thanks to the Road of Life. During the first blockade winter, the road worked from November 22 to April 24, and in 152 days more than 550,000 Leningraders and 35,000 wounded soldiers were evacuated from the city, and more than 360,000 tons of cargo were transported, including over 260,000 tons of food. During the second winter, from December 19, 1942 to March 30, 1943, 89,000 people were evacuated along the Road of Life, and more than 200,000 tons of goods were transported, of which over 100,000 were food products.
The besieged Leningrad, despite its plight, continued to supply the front with weapons - it's hard to believe, but the tanks of the Kirov Plant crossed the ice of Ladoga on their own, in order to reduce the load, dragging the removed turret behind them on a drag trailer (only in the first six months of the blockade, the city built about 700 armored vehicles), but most of the weapons and ammunition were also transported along the Road of Life in trucks. And when preparations began to break the blockade, a huge number of soldiers and military equipment were brought to the city along the same Road of Life.
If the Germans had succeeded in destroying the Road of Life, Leningrad would have perished along with all its inhabitants. However, at first, the Nazis simply did not have enough reserves - precisely because of the impossibility of a simultaneous attack on Moscow and Leningrad in 1941, the Germans decided to starve the northern capital - and later significant reserves of Soviet troops were drawn to Lake Ladoga. In addition to the anti-aircraft guns of ten artillery battalions, the route was covered by an air division, three fighter regiments, a rifle regiment, a naval brigade, an NKVD division and several other army units.
The cover became so powerful that in the second winter the cars could go with their headlights on. When the car fell through the ice, the headlights (or the headlight, if we mean the military version) shone for a long time from under the water column. They say that the drivers called these dead cars "fireflies" ... In 1973, one of the dead cars was raised to the surface to become a monument, but they could not restore the metal parts, so the remains of the truck were simply rolled into concrete, recreating the lost forms. This monument stands near the village of Dusyevo, where one of the automobile battalions was stationed during the blockade. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a "lorry", but "Zakhar Ivanovich", ZIS-5.
But the monument to the "lorry" appeared much later - in 2012, the most detailed life-size bronze copy of the GAZ-AA was installed at the 10th kilometer of the Road of Life. Where the "iron rescuers", drivers, their passengers and cargo were subjected to the most fierce shelling.
Now children learn about the details of that war much later than their peers from the Soviet past. And in general, it seems to me, they know much less. I still don’t really know how to tell my 7-year-old son at least part of what is written in this article. But I will definitely do it.
January 27 - Day of the complete liberation of the city of Leningrad by Soviet troops from the blockade of its Nazi troops.
Helped to survive and defeat the besieged city legendary road life. It was laid through Ladoga in the autumn of 1941 - in a narrow 16-kilometer strip, which the enemy failed to capture on the western shore of the lake. For more than two years, this was the only thread that connected Leningrad with the rest of the country.
From the memoirs of the driver of the 390th automobile battalion Vasily Serdyuk:
The third day on Ladoga chalk, without ceasing, a blizzard. Snow covered my lorry on the radiator. I got stuck right in the middle of the lake. During the second blockade winter, Ladoga froze a month later. Cars went on the ice only on December 23. But there was nowhere to go in the blizzard. I could only occasionally get out of the cab and jump at the car so as not to fall asleep.
When it began to get light, I shoveled a snowdrift from the steps, but, laying the path further, I scooped up water instead of snow. I remember that there used to be a hole here. A few days ago, I myself stopped at this place to fill the radiator with water. And a year ago, the foreman of the “flyers” Pyotr Klochkov died somewhere nearby. He was repairing a lorry whose engine had stalled. A bomb dropped by a fascist pilot broke the ice, taking both people and the car under water.
But Sasha Marov swam up from the bottom of Ladoga. His lorry fell into the hole so quickly that for some time it even continued to shine with headlights.
Captain Gavrilenko was sitting next to the driver. Both were in felt boots and sheepskin coats - this made it difficult to get out of the cab. In addition, the commander caught on hand brake the belt on which the holster hung. Sasha helped him free this belt. They surfaced, supporting each other, in front of the road workers, who were following in the back of another car. The girls helped the victims get out of the hole onto the hard ice.
Among the rescuers was Tanya - a small but combative traffic controller from the 12th kilometer, to which I did not reach five kilometers. At the post, Tanya stood in felt boots, wadded trousers and a sheepskin coat.
Through one shoulder - a carbine, through the other - a gas mask. At the waist is a pantrontash. During the day she has a red flag in her hand, at night - a bat lantern.
In camouflage, she looked like a big furry snowflake. Especially if the snow feathers her eyebrows and eyelashes. Only huge azure eyes beat like a hot spring on her face ...
My car was shaken by a sudden movement of ice. Nearby grew a hummock as high as a hut. The ice under the snowdrifts must have broken. I got out of the cab and hid behind this hummock. You could feel the waves crashing under your feet. The icy wind of Siverko drove water from the open part of Ladoga under the ice shell of the Shlisselburg Bay. I could not stay in my "shelter" for a long time. A warm sheepskin coat did not save - Siverko pierced to the bone, and I returned to the cabin again ...
I loaded sacks of flour in the fishing village of Kobona, when a snowstorm was just approaching Ladoga. The snow swirled suddenly and so thickly that it got dark in broad daylight. I had to turn on the headlights. But soon they were no longer needed. The track was covered with snowdrifts. The wheels skidded and the car came to a complete stop. But you can't throw 1.5 tons of flour in the middle of the lake. This is a daily ration for 10 thousand Leningraders ...
This ice ROAD saved human LIVES. She took them for travel ...Text: Denis Orlov
Photo: Denis Orlov. Collection of the branch of TsVMM "Road of Life" in Osintsovo
When I announced that I was going to the “Road of Life”, in two completely unrelated places, I heard a childishly naive and adultly terrible question: “What is this?” ... Yes, I admit that in one case, a man made a foolish joke. But the other one, he really did not know or forgot about what was happening in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) in 1941-1943. No, of course, if I uttered the word "blockade", and in the back streets of its overloaded advertising and all sorts of memory talk shows, everything would fall into place. But I didn't say...
On the third kilometer of the Road of Life, a birch grove runs down to the river. The trees in it are tied with red scarves. These trunks are symbols of the souls of Leningrad children who died from starvation and raids. But if you plant a tree in memory of everyone, the mournful grove will stretch from the city limits, the Rzhevka railway station, to Osinovets and the shores of Lake Ladoga ...
Requiem
A diver, one of those who, during the blockade winter, was laying a high-frequency cable under the ice of Ladoga to connect the besieged city with the mainland, immediately after the descent nervously jerked the halyard: immediate rise! Once on the surface, he confusedly told what had happened. At the bottom of the lake stood a lorry with full body of people. Apparently, the truck went under the ice instantly, and the weakened residents, who were taken out of the blockade ring, could not jump out. And when the diver opened the cabin door, a truly apocalyptic picture appeared to his eyes: a driver was driving a truck, holding a baby on his lap, and next to him was a woman with a baby. I don’t know if the director of the Museum of the Road of Life, Alexander Bronislavovich Voitsekhovsky, told about this case to veterans of the Wehrmacht who came to visit the places of past battles? By the way, they brought their own, brand new uniform as a gift to the museum...
Children are the main thing that the ruthless mechanism of war does not take into account. Thanks to transportation along the frozen Ladoga, already on December 25, 1941, the daily ration of bread in besieged Leningrad was raised ... from 125 to 200 grams. But how was it possible to explain to the children that apart from this they will not receive anything?!
Since the time of Troy, hunger has been the main weapon of the besiegers of the city. Well, the special commission of the Leningrad Health Department called the results of the action of this weapon "alimentary dystrophy." It was she, and not bombs or shells, that claimed most of the lives of Leningraders.
The main instrument of death
The German army did not have enough resources to attack both Leningrad and Moscow at the same time. On September 8, having closed the ring near the city on the Neva, the Germans chose hunger as their instrument of death. The invaders could not be denied imagery. No one has yet talked about the Road of Life, but the head of the operations department of the 18th German Army, Ferch, wrote in his diary: “Let the way home and from home be the road of death for these people.”
By the way, in the translated literature, which filled the last years on the shelves of our stores, we often read about such factors that decided the outcome of the war as communist fanatics, inexhaustible human resources and, of course, “General Frost”. Let it be so, but the gigantic transport operation that went on for three years under the very noses of the Germans (8-13 kilometers away) does not fit well into the stereotype folded in the West.
We will take navigation out of the scope of the narrative (after all, this is not at all a topic for an off-road magazine), but the ice military highway (VAD) was originally planned as a military operation. Already on September 8, Andrei Zhdanov, secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and city party committee, summoned specialists from the hydrometeorological service of the Baltic Fleet for consultations on organizing transportation along Ladoga. On September 24, the service submitted to the command a report on 34 sheets, reflecting data on the strength, stability and duration of the ice cover of the lake. So, in fact, the Road of Life project was born.
First flight
It remained to wait for the ice. From November 12 to November 17, 1941, secretly, constantly at the risk of falling under fragile ice, marine hydrographs and soldiers of the 88th separate bridge-building battalion reconnoitered the future route. On November 20, the first horse cart passed through it, on the 21st - passenger car, and on the 22nd - a column of 60 trucks of the 388th separate autobattalion under the command of Captain Porchunov. The cars left the village of Kokorevo empty in the direction of the mainland, to the village of Kobona. The distance is 150–200 meters, the cabin doors are open, the maximum possible speed is 45–50 km/h. The ice, barely 20 centimeters thick, sagged noticeably under the weight of the trucks.
Just in the place where the first sixty Porchunov cars descended onto the ice, near the Torn Ring memorial ensemble erected in 1966, we meet the GAZ-MM lorry, in order to try to understand how everything happened in the distant 41st year.
Lorry
We intentionally did not dramatize and "burden" the reader with the question of whether the modern SUV Dear Life, but they found the most real lorry - inferior, with strangers rear springs, patched cab and random bodywork. However, for the most part, they were like that - work for wear and tear and quick repairs with the help of improvised means. More important for us was a plate with the date of release of the truck: "12/12/41". This means that this car, preserved by one of the St. Petersburg plants as an internal transport, could also go through that Ladoga!
The first ice road operated until 21 April. Frosts in the winter of 1941-42 were severe (on the night of December 31, 51.7 degrees below zero were recorded), the thickness of the ice was decent. As a result, quite strong ice kept in April even under a half-meter layer of water, which the cars cut through like boats. So, on our April trip, specialists from the Ministry of Emergency Situations check the thickness of the ice cover: half a meter! Moreover, its upper part is a swollen porridge, into which the car buries its wheels. Surprisingly, due to the full thrust (167 Nm), developed at 1200 rpm (for today's engines, they are considered idle), this car is independently selected from captivity. And behind there is a track cut like in oil. On the dark and solid ice another difficulty - on narrow tires 6.50–20, the lorry glides like on skates.
blindly
At night, on the Road of Life, cars were moving with a blackout, guided by the landmarks placed by the scouts, the bat-type lamps of the traffic controllers and the oncoming horse carts. Poor lighting brought additional losses - in the dark, the drivers could not see holes and craters. If, however, a large crack came across - a "drill", the car drove under the ice floe at full speed. In this case, the driver did not have time to jump out - the previous ice floe, like a tombstone, covered the car. The guys from the Ministry of Emergency Situations said that recently a kiter (a fan of skiing with a paraglider) died in the same way on Ladoga. From the surface it is difficult to see if there is a ravine in front or just a puddle of melt water. One half of the ice floe tilted under the weight of the athlete, and the parachute dragged him under the other. The folded parachute was found, but the kiter himself was not.
But the most difficult thing for military drivers was when a blizzard began on Ladoga - the wind literally blew the cars off course. So, one day the ignition system failed at the driver Ivan Kudelsky in the middle of the lake. The column is gone. While fiddling with candles, it started to snow. Deprived of landmarks, the driver drove ... to Shlisselburg. Fortunately, the German sentry was confused, and Ivan tied him up and brought him safely to ours, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Star. This curious case, however, refused to be confirmed in the museum in Osinovets, but director Wojciechowski said that stopping a food truck on the highway was punished to the fullest extent of wartime laws.
Stars on the hood
Two tons of bread is a thousand rations, and those who left for the third voyage across the ice knew this very well. However, food was not the main cargo. They transported coal for two power plants operating in the city, transported liquid fuel (the submarine cable from the Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power station and an underwater oil pipeline had not yet been laid), transported metal (defense plants continued to operate in the city), transported ammunition, weapons and explosives. For every hundred tons of cargo transported along Ladoga, drivers painted an asterisk on the hood, like pilots for a downed plane.
During the day, the "Ladoga" driver was supposed to make two shuttle flights, but some managed to make three. And in order not to fall asleep, they resorted to a barbaric method - a bowler hat was hung from the cabin wall, which rattled and beat on the head.
The cars came with drag trailers, which made it possible to transport at a time more cargo without the risk of falling through the ice. So, the driver of the 390th separate motor battalion, holder of the Order of the Red Star Vasily Serdyuk made about 400 trips on a lorry with a trailer, delivering a total of 1,100 tons of various cargoes to the besieged city.
resonant wave
What was the cost of pre-war recommendations for determining the carrying capacity of ice? Hydrographers carried out calculations, guided by an unwritten rule: if it is impossible, but it is very necessary, then ... it is possible. In the southern part of Lake Ladoga, under enemy artillery and mortar fire, hydrographers and hydraulic engineers conducted experiments to determine the maximum loads on ice. The initiator of such experiments was the well-known scientist Boris Proskuryakov, and the general strategy was outlined by Academician Abram Ioffe. All the conclusions of front-line scientists flocked to the Ice Service of the Naval Observatory. The deformation resistance of ice under static load and data on elastic deformations of ice during the propagation of a blast wave over the ice were studied. During the escort of motorcades along Ladoga, previously unknown fluctuations of the cover were also observed: the wave formed under the subsiding ice moved at a constant speed for a given thickness of the cover and the depth of the reservoir. It could lead the applied load or lag behind it, but the most dangerous thing was the coincidence of these speeds - then resonance set in, leading to a break in the ice.
without turret
Today it seems incredible, but the besieged city gave the front tanks. During the first six months of the blockade - more than 700 cars! And they also moved to mainland on the Ladoga ice. So, the 47-ton KV-1 walked on the ice without a turret, dragging it a hundred meters behind on a drag!
Like any road, the Ladoga highway was serviced - signs were installed, cleared of drifts, holes were sealed, and the ice was thickened. Tent hospitals, rest and repair centers were set up along the road. First of all, they were intended for those who were taken out of the besieged city. The statistics are as follows: during the first winter, 514,000 residents and 35,000 wounded soldiers were evacuated.
In total, the Road of Life was serviced by 4,500 vehicles, of which 3,000 one and a half GAZ-AA and GAZ-MM, 1000 three-ton ZiS-5, and the rest - different cars, including 40 city buses ZiS-8 from the so-called Moscow Bus Expedition. The latter arrived at Ladoga in January 1942 and took out 69,000 blockade survivors, leaving a quarter of the cars at the bottom of the lake.
When the ice got tired
The Ladoga highway did not at all fit the popular idea of the road as some kind of static segment from point A to point B. It's all about the fatigue load of the ice. The route withstood an average of 15 days, after which, at a considerable distance from it, another trajectory had to be laid. The distance from Kokorevo and Vaganovo to Kobona on ice is about 32 kilometers. But during the winter, such roads had to be organized from fifty - 3000 kilometers for two ice epics!
For the same reason, they refused to install anti-aircraft guns on ice - after firing a few shots, the gun fell through. Anti-aircraft guns were placed along the coast. They had enough range to cover most of the airspace over the lake, and the track itself was bared with heavy DShK machine guns, which also did a good job.
Cover
So what prevented the Germans from destroying the strategic means of communication? The route was covered by ten artillery battalions, the 39th air division, the 123rd fighter regiment, the 5th and 13th fighter regiments. The 4th Naval Brigade, the 284th Rifle Regiment, the 1st NKVD Division, and units of the 23rd Army were stationed here. The cover of the road was so powerful that the second winter the cars went with their headlights on. With the lights on, they went under the ice ... Trucks lived longer than people. Drivers called these terrible monuments "fireflies"...
Other ice roads. Or not Ladoga alone ...
In addition to the Road of Life, the defense lines of Leningrad were connected by other ice arteries. One of the routes connected Shepelevsky Lighthouse, Seskar Island and Lavensari Island (now Powerful) in the Gulf of Finland. The length of this road was 71 km. By the way, it was crossed by ... a similar German route from the Stirsudden lighthouse to the Kurgalsky Peninsula. The intersection of these routes (there were constant skirmishes between our fighters and the Germans), the wits called the "International". I wonder which of the roads was the “main” and which was the “secondary”?
Another extensive network of ice roads connected the Oranienbaum bridgehead with Kronstadt and Leningrad. This artery is sometimes called the Little Road of Life.
The idea of creating a unique monument - 45 kilometers long, from the hero city to the shore of Lake Ladoga - arose back in the 60s. Apparently, the authorities then did not really want to remember the history of the blockade (willy-nilly the question arose about the causes and victims), so they began to build it using the folk construction method. Several monuments were erected: "Flower of Life" (a monument to children in the siege), "Katyusha", "Broken Ring" ... In total, about two dozen. And every kilometer of the route is marked with a commemorative kilometer post. This road is now
A-128 winds between forests and a few villages with Russian and Finnish names. In the region of the 40th kilometer, it rests on the shore of the lake: one of the most famous monuments, the Broken Ring, stands here. This is where the most dangerous area trails - descent to the ice.
ICE AND FIRE
From point of view modern motorist, and the driver of the 1930s, a distance of 30 km does not deserve attention. But the route from Kobona, on the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga, to Kokorev on the western shore has its own account. During the first war winter alone, about a thousand cars went under the ice ...
The first convoy of ships along the still unfrozen Ladoga to the besieged Leningrad passed on September 3, 1941. Already on the 8th, when the Germans occupied Shlisselburg, it became clear: the city on the Neva was under blockade. Aviation could not fully supply the city and the units defending it, all the more so - to evacuate hundreds of thousands of residents. The builders urgently began to build a road from Novaya Ladoga to the shore of the lake, and as soon as it froze (the winter of 1941 turned out to be early and cold), they began to equip the Ladoga ice section of the route. The first 60 vehicles under the command of Major V. Porchunov descended onto the ice from Leningrad on November 22, 1941. The next day, loaded with food, we went back.
GAZ-MM lorries (three-ton ZIS-5s were launched on the ice later, when it became thicker) carried soldiers, ammunition and, of course, bread to the besieged city. Back to the east - wounded soldiers and Leningraders, almost indifferent to everything from hunger. Sledge sledges were often hitched to cars moving at a distance of 150–200 m. As a rule, drivers did not close the doors in order to quickly leave the cab if the car began to fall through the ice. Sometimes the doors were removed altogether. We drove mostly at night, while some drivers sometimes managed to make several walkers. The Nazis constantly bombed the track; during the operation of the "Road of Life" about 500 German aircraft were shot down over it.
According to archival data, in 1941-1943, the "Road of Life" was served by over 20 thousand people - drivers, mechanics, builders, road workers, etc. 700 people worked alone on ice traffic controllers (in fact, not one, but six tracks worked in order to disperse flows and minimize losses)!
In the first war winter ice crossing held until the 20th of April 1942. Last days the cars were already on the melt water. During the second winter of the siege, the ice on Ladoga was much thinner, but again every night cars were moving along the lake, traffic controllers were on duty, anti-aircraft gunners were working ...
More than a million tons of cargo was transported over the ice, more than 600 thousand people were evacuated (in total, over 1.5 million tons of cargo and over 1.3 million people along Ladoga). And here are the numbers of the Ladoga account: 500 grams of bread per day for a soldier on the front line, 300 - in the rear, 250 grams - for a worker, 125 - for a dependent and a child ... How many people died during the blockade of Leningrad - in battles, from hunger, on the Road of Life "? Historians are still arguing. But the main thing is still not in the numbers ...
The main thing is that we remember everyone: soldiers who died defending one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, drivers who failed to dodge a truck from a bomb or a hole, boys and girls who never waited for a car that would take them away from a terrible, hungry city ... However - Do we do everything for the sake of this memory?
THIS IS A MOVIE
The Road of Life Museum is a small wooden building on the shore of the lake, near which there are several objects - boats, barges, anti-aircraft guns, and even a very well-preserved Douglas military transport aircraft. The director, Alexander Bronislavovich Voitsekhovsky, volunteered to conduct the tour. It turns out that the museum was created on voluntary in the 1960s, enthusiasts collected precious exhibits from the time of the recent war, the memories of participants (many were still alive!). Then he became government agency, and in the turbulent 90s, it was decided to ... privatize its exhibits. Now the museum is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, but the lawsuit with the "privatizers" is still ongoing in order to return part of the property. In any case, the War Department does not seem to be particularly interested in the museum. Apart from a meager salary for eight full-time employees, no funds are allocated.
I turned to St. Petersburg Governor V. Matvienko for help; she promised, but... I understand that she has a lot of worries in the city, and this is not her territory, - says A. Voitsekhovsky. - And the governor of the region V. Serdyukov immediately refused: there are no funds. Thank you, we have a lot of volunteers!
The plane, for example, was repaired to a very high quality especially for the filming of the film "Running" (it did not fly, of course, but actively acted as a scenery), and then gratefully returned to the museum. Director Alexander Rogozhkin promised to continue to help. With the help of veterans, volunteers and just friends, it is possible to maintain buildings and exhibits; Moreover, there are more and more!
The fact is that Alexander Bronislavovich is an auto engineer by education, and his passion is the restoration of old cars. And there are hundreds of them at the bottom of Lake Ladoga! And every summer the director with a group of friends is going on an expedition to the bottom of the lake. Equipment, machinery, scuba gear - their own, bought with their own money; complex devices are given out completely disinterestedly (for a while, of course) in St. Petersburg research institutes.
We have already raised several cars and buses; this summer, a very well-preserved ZIS-5 truck is next in line. Ladoga is a treacherous lake, the water is very cold and muddy, so you can work at a depth of 10-12 meters only in late June - early July, the director said. - And the rest of the time we restore raised cars - of course, on a voluntary basis.
He proudly showed the hangar (he built it with his brother!), where there are three cars raised from the bottom of the lake - a GAZ-MM lorry, a three-ton ZIS-5 and a bus on the ZIS-8 chassis. During the war, he transported children and the wounded to the mainland ...
This is how several dozen people “on a voluntary basis” are trying to preserve the memory of the great feat of people who, having overcome incredible difficulties, managed to save a huge city ...
Be that as it may, but people come here, and every year there are more and more excursions.
In 2006 we received 37.5 thousand visitors! - happily said director. - And in January-February, there are applications from schools for almost every day!
… And then we drove around the lake on dry land and got to the place where the ice part of the route ended (or began?) near the village of Kobona.
There are no tourists at all on this shore of the lake (too far from the city - about 150 km), so only a wooden cross reminds of the heroic past. But at the intersection with the M-18 "Kola" highway, many years ago one of the most famous monuments was erected - "To the Unknown Driver". Passing cars traditionally honk, and many stop. Someone puts flowers to the monument, someone just stands, is silent - and goes on.
P.S. This summer, the editorial staff of the Za Rulem magazine is going to take part in the recovery from the bottom of Lake Ladoga of one of the cars that went under the ice on the Road of Life in 1941-1943.
