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Between Two Aerodromes<br />
A line had already formed there of people with minor injuries who needed<br />
bandages. Amazingly, no one had been killed or seriously wounded among all<br />
our acquaintances.<br />
Our neighbor—the fac<strong>to</strong>ry foreman, a former artilleryman—had taken cover<br />
during the explosions with his entire family in the cellar.When the most terrifying<br />
part was over, he also attempted <strong>to</strong> search for my remains.When he saw me<br />
whole and unharmed, with my mother almost beside herself, he offered <strong>to</strong> give<br />
me a thrashing as a warning. He often used this method on his own five children.<br />
This time his offer was not accepted. But soon another occasion presented the<br />
opportunity for such an educational lesson.<br />
The immediate destruction and fires from the depots in the area blowing up<br />
were surprisingly small. However, thousands of artillery shells of various calibers,<br />
hand grenades, and boxes of cartridges were scattered over a radius of more than<br />
three kilometers. Red Army units mobilized <strong>to</strong> collect this ammunition that was<br />
so hazardous for the populace and so essential <strong>to</strong> the army, but they could not<br />
manage <strong>to</strong> gather and neutralize it all. No one could clearly explain why such a<br />
large amount of artillery shells had been s<strong>to</strong>red at the depots since they had been<br />
in catastrophically short supply during the czarist army’s war with the Germans.<br />
The Red Army was also on hunger rations and was compelled <strong>to</strong> make use of<br />
booty captured in battles with the Whites.<br />
Sappers, who had blown up whole piles of ordnance in the Studenyy ravine,<br />
enlightened the curious little boys as <strong>to</strong> “what was what” as far as ammunition<br />
goes. I decided that the war was continuing, and that in any case, it wouldn’t do<br />
any harm <strong>to</strong> have my own arsenal. Unbeknownst <strong>to</strong> the grownups, my comrades<br />
and I stashed a couple dozen 3- and 6-inch unexploded shells and bottle-necked<br />
and fragmentation hand grenades under the porch of our house, which was at<br />
the same time my parents’ place of business. Fortunately, the grenades had no<br />
fuses. We learned how <strong>to</strong> get the explosive out of the ammunition and were<br />
delighted by the lighting effects when we threw it in<strong>to</strong> the campfires that we<br />
made on the riverbank.While putting away gardening <strong>to</strong>ols under the porch, a<br />
grownup discovered our arsenal. The sappers were called immediately, and the<br />
fac<strong>to</strong>ry cell of the Communist Party demanded an investigation in<strong>to</strong> the possible<br />
counterrevolutionary plot <strong>to</strong> seize power in our area, or at least, at the fac<strong>to</strong>ry<br />
and in the village of Shelepikha. I confessed our secret plan <strong>to</strong> my parents: we<br />
had been preparing a gift for the Red Army for the crushing defeat of the White<br />
Poles. The plot scenario faded, but in this case, the neighbor insisted that his<br />
educational method be applied. For the first and last time in my life, my father<br />
gave me a thrashing, using an ordinary office ruler as the implement for the<br />
corporal punishment.<br />
The edge of the antenna field of the Khodynskaya radio station, the largest in<br />
Russia, lay just 2 kilometers from the annihilated powder depots. The steel and<br />
wood <strong>to</strong>wers, which were over 100 meters high, s<strong>to</strong>od at intervals of 100 meters.<br />
Strung between them, on garlands of insula<strong>to</strong>rs, hung the sausage-shaped anten-<br />
35