—— Our Zhenya ——147Maybe I have not seen everything. But nowhere have I read of any
such monument...
I mention this not only because I have just remembered
about our Zhenya. I benefited hugely from the efforts of military
medics during the war, and I also enjoyed a firm, constant and
secure friend ship with the staff of the divisional medical section.
It began long before the war and continues to this day, although
neither the regiment, nor the division, nor even the actual medical
section is still in existence; the division and all its ‘auxiliaries’ were
disbanded back in 1945.
Military orderlies Ivan Mikhailovich Muravyov and Ivan
Mikhailovich Vasilyev had graduated from the Tambov medical
school in 1939. The three of us all began our military service
together in the Karelian–Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. Both
Ivans then worked in the regimental medical section. Also there
were the medical orderlies Vera Yarutova, Ivan Novostroyenny
and Sasha Zamashkin – our regimental poet. And the head of the
section, Major Sergei Nikolaevich Polikarpov, who had graduated
from a medical institute just before being called up into the army,
was a doctor in the regiment. However, since he was not certificated,
he wore a Red Army uniform with no special markings; he still did
not have full doctor’s status. People in the know talked of him as
a ‘surgeon on whom great hopes rested’! And so it later came to
pass. But back then, in 1940, we all quickly became friends. I do
not remember how, except that it was not on any medical basis, as
I have never been ill during peacetime. I was also on good terms
with other military medical staff – maybe because I was the hardy
kind and did not weary them with ailments. At any rate, when
I had the chance to relax in the rear for an hour or two, I was
always a welcome visitor in our divisional medical section. I just
had to turn up there and my friends would instantly hand me over
to the sister on duty:
‘Vera, set the bath up for Nikolaev, and give him clean linen
and a spare bed – let him catch up on his sleep in conditions fit for
a human being.’