To the 75th anniversary of the Victory: Personal
Mother and war
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About Mariya Cherkashina, a participant of the Great Patriotic War, one of those who is gone Mom, participant of the Great Patriotic War, who lived with us in Minsk for more than ten years, died nine years ago. When I think about her, images pop up on the inner vision screen. Some of them are formed on the basis of my mother’s stories about herself. Mariya, a teenage girl, enjoys herself sitting on a cart in a white butter-cloth dress made by her mother, wearing blue-
The fate of my mommy, like hundreds of thousands of Soviet women, fell on the wartime. She was lucky to survive, to enjoy life in her native Ukraine together with her husband, Mikhail Cherkashin, veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Also under the peaceful skies of Belarus among children and grandchildren.
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hemmed socks. She’s 12 or 13 years old. And they call her MashaManechka-Marusya and Mariyka. And the cart is moving and moving into her misty future… Ukraine, Kharkiv region… Beginning of the hungry thir‑ ties… The Falchenkos, the spouses Pyotr and Agraphena with their daughters and son, had already moved from the village Blagodatnoye to Rubezhnoye: father of Marusya, Vanya and the youngest Zinochka was appointed chairman of the local village council. And soon repressive actions were taken against them for “wrong administration of public wheat”. In general, for neg‑ ligence. And how it was in reality, alas, there is no one to tell about it today. Cherished memory to all my departed relatives. And the cart is moving and moving… Marusya, swinging her legs, admires her canvas shoes. They’re washed and whitened with tooth powder. And she doesn’t know yet that when she is 15, she will go by train alone to faraway Karelia to visit her father, from whom she has’t heard for a long time. As well as the fact that he will be released later, and Pyotr Vlasovich will again work as a collective farm driver. And in the meantime, she doesn’t know that in the future she will get acquainted with the kindest woman with a grand name — Vera Nikolayevna, a noblewoman by birth. She will not only teach the girl the wisdom of banking, but also good manners, develop her taste and a sense of beauty. Marusya does not know yet that she, a 17‑year-old girl, will marry my twenty-five year old father Mikhail Cherkashin. Having returned after his four-year service in the Marines in the Pacific Fleet in the Far East, he will meet a brown-eyed slim-waisted girl at the Volchansky House of Culture, where he will come to work at the local brass band. And the waist of the young ac‑ tress of the amateur folk theatre is just the size of his palms’ girth.. Yes, my mother can not anticipate that soon in 1938 she will give birth to their son Yury, my elder brother. And she can’t even im‑ agine that terrible day when the war will break out.. Neither can my father, who, as a military musician, will be called to arms dur‑ ing the Great Patriotic War. And will pull 450 wounded soldiers and officers from the battlefield. I can’t help but cite the words on the award sheet of my father’s Medal “For Courage”: “Dur‑ ing the period of the HSB (health support battalion — Auth.) deployment, he was staying in the front group. He worked day and night, without sleep and rest, to help the sick and wound‑ ed as soon as possible. Only during the combat operation from
