: A young wounded soldier in a hospital falls in love with a high school student. Returning to the front, he is again injured. He is sent to the hospital, he is looking forward to meeting with his beloved, but falls under fire.

The division of the retelling into chapters is conditional.

Severe wound

Volodya Tretyakov fought in December 1941 and was even wounded in the arm. In the fall of 1943, after completing eight-month officer courses, he returned from the rear to the front.

Tretyakov got to his artillery regiment on the way and arrived at the headquarters of the artillery brigade for an appointment. Tretyakov liked the intelligence chief, he invited him to remain in the headquarters as a platoon commander, but he refused, asked for a battery.

Tretyakov was appointed commander of a communications platoon, but so far he was instructed to take to the front a battery whose commander was sick. Tretyakov got lost, wandered all night and went to the flimsy bridge thrown over the ravine.

To give courage to tractor drivers and force them to transport multi-ton guns across the bridge, Tretyakov climbed under the bridge and stood there while the first gun passed from above.

... he felt all this enormous burden descend from the bridge to the earth, and the bridge sighed over him. Only now did he feel how much pressure was pressing from above ...

The fighters of the communications platoon received the young commander coolly, but obeyed discipline. The fighting on this sector of the front was conducted for several days. Tretyakov, risking his life, went to the front line to stretch the communication wire, outline the target and communicate its coordinates to the gunners by telephone.

Along the way, Tretyakov found out that his stepfather had served and died in the same rifle regiment. Father Tretyakov was arrested and he disappeared without a trace. And then the stepfather appeared, risking taking care of the repressed family. The younger sister of Tretyakov considered him a father, and Tretyakov himself, being a teenager then, did not accept his stepfather, treated him like a tenant, and only now realized that he was wrong.

During the attack of the fascist tanks, Tretyakov was wounded in the arm, his side was cut with fragments. He ended up in a field hospital, where fragments were removed from him and sent to the rear for treatment, beyond the Urals.

Rear Hospital and First Love

Fifty months later, when Tretyakov got a little stronger, he underwent a second operation on his arm - he took out small fragments. Days in the hospital flowed uniformly. In a large chamber lay several people. Among them was Captain Atrakovsky, wounded by a splinter in the head, wearing the Order of the Red Banner on a shirt. He was held captive and called his order "a pass to life."

A group of high school students often performed at the hospital; they sang for the wounded. Among them, Tretyakov noticed a beautiful girl with long thick braids. Waking up once, he saw this girl at the bedside of Atrakovsky - she was telling him about some of her trouble, but Tretyakov did not hear the details.

Patients in the ward told how they were injured. Tretyakov also told how in the winter of 1942, by stupidity, he fell under the propeller of a snowmobile and injured his hand. Then the head of the special department believed that this was not "well-thought-out self-mutilation", and released Tretyakov.

A few days later Atrakovsky explained to Tretyakov how lucky he was, because he could have been tried.

Death in battle seems wonderful compared to dishonor.

Tretyakov felt that Atrakovsky knew more than what he was saying, and wanted to tell him about his father, but he did not dare.

On New Year's Eve, local artists and schoolchildren arranged a concert for the wounded. There was also a girl with braids - Sasha.

Tretyakov managed to get to know her, and a few days later Sasha already told him about her misfortune - she did not respond to the feelings of the guy who was leaving for the front. He died, and now Sasha was tormented by conscience.

In January, Tretyakov borrowed a greatcoat from a roommate and went to Sasha in the evening. The girl was not at home - she was with her mother, who contracted diphtheria and was taken to an infectious diseases hospital. In severe frost, wearing the same overcoat, Tretyakov found infectious barracks in an unfamiliar city and escorted Sasha home.

He walked like on wooden legs, instead of fingers in his boots there was something insensible, swollen. And Sasha’s felt boots gently crunched nearby, and the month was shining, and the snow was shining. All this was.

Since that evening, Tretyakov often began to be at Sasha’s house. She and her mother were evacuated from the Urals from Moscow, given land for the vegetable garden and shared with a very stupid, but kind woman, the wife of the head of the railway station. Soon Tretyakov became his own in this house.

Sasha admitted that her mother was German by birth. Tretyakov understood what a spot lay on them, because he himself was the son of the repressed. After this confession, Sasha became even closer to him.

Tretyakova was sought after by his classmate Oleg Selivanov.

At the beginning of the war, he was recognized as unsuitable for military service, and he made a military career in the rear, rose to the rank of secretary of the military medical commission. To heat the room, Sasha collected coal under the wagons, poured from the engine firebox. It was very dangerous - the composition could start at any moment. So that Sasha would not risk her life, Tretyakov asked Oleg for a car for firewood, and he managed to get them.

All day Tretyakov with Oleg and Sasha sawed and stacked firewood, and then dined with the girl and her mother, who returned from the infectious diseases hospital.

Return to the front, new wound and death

Tretyakov’s treatment is over. Saying goodbye to Sasha, he returned to his unit and immediately caught a cold, suffered from heat and aches for a long time and recovered only on the eve of the big battle.

Soviet troops moved forward. In the steppe near Odessa, a Tretyakov platoon came under shelling. Tretyakov was again wounded in the same hand, and again he was sent to the rear hospital. He rode in a wagon train with the wounded, and he felt good and calm in his soul - Tretyakov thought about meeting with his mother, sister, Sasha and that the war was most likely over for him.

Suddenly, in a nearby ravine Tretyakov noticed something suspicious.

He did not hear the machine gun burst: he was hit, his leg was knocked under him, and he was torn off the wagon and fell. Everything happened instantly.

It quickly became clear that the convoy had stumbled upon the Germans, lagging behind their own, and had come under machine-gun fire. Tretyakov was wounded, but he continued to shoot back. Suddenly there was an explosion, and in the place where the Tretyakov was lying and shooting, there was no one left, only a cloud of smoke dispersed.