201

May 1944

LETTER TO HIS MOTHER

p Good-bye, my dear Mother,

p This is my dying letter and if you ever get it you will know that your son is gone. I died as your son and as the son of my country. I didn’t spare my life for people’s good and happiness, for your peaceful old age, for a happy life for the children.

p No tears! Be proud and don’t forget me. Please tell the young ones that you once had a son and that he didn’t spare himself and gave his life for their future and their happiness.

p I find it terribly hard to write you this letter but I am firmly convinced my comrades will carry on where I left off. The nazis will be wiped off the tace of the earth, and they won’t get any peace in the other world either. I am Ukrainian, but Byelorussian soil will take me as her son just as well.

p All my love and kisses to you for the last time!

p Your son Oleg 

Whoever finds this letter, please send it to: Yevgeniya Nechitovskaya, Flat 6, 144 Prozorovskaya St., Kiev.

LETTER TO HIS GIRL-FRIEND

p Farewell, my darling Lidushka,

p This is my last letter. And if you ever get it, I shall no longer be alive. Please understand that I gave my life dearly, honourably, on the battlefield, and the Byelorussian soil has accepted me, son of the Ukraine, as her own son.

202

p It’s no use crying, better spare a thought for me now and again, be proud that the man who loved you, who wanted to build a life together with you, died honourably for his country, for people’s happiness. Of course I didn’t want to die, but the call of our country is law, my duty called and life had to take second place.

p We dreamed of so much, but.... The years will pass, you will have a son and I would like you to tell him just a tiny bit about the man who wanted to be his father.

p That’s all, good-bye.

p Love and lots of kisses for the last time!

Your loving Oleg

Whoever finds this letter, please send it to: Lapidus (for Lida Abalyshnikova), Flat 6, 25 Engels St., Kharkov.

At the beginning of 1944, the Soviet Army were beating back the nazis westwards on all fronts. By May the troops of the 1st Byelorussian Front were fighting on the right bank of the River Dnieper and clearing the Polessye Region from the nazis.

Oleg Nechitovsky

p During the battles for Big and Small Kalinkovichi, the commander of the forward battalion lost contact with the company operating ahead in the region of the main thrust. Things began to look desperate for the stranded men. It was vital to re-establish contact at all cost. Signalman Oleg Nechitovsky was called upon to perform the extremely dangerous mission.

p He realised that he was going to an almost certain death, since the area where the cable had been damaged was constantly under fire. He searched for and found the break in the line with shells bursting all around him. Wounded and fast losing blood, he never stopped work splicing the broken line. His last words sent along the repaired line were: "Order accomplished. Line’s back to normal.” Sensing that he could not muster enough strength to crawl back, he wrote his last letters to his mother and girl-friend.

When the enemy retreated, his comrades found him already cold. The two letters were discovered in his pocket.