Even in this copse the forest could be sensed. Midges swirled around in the slender, quivering rays of sunlight. He caught sight of a narrow rivulet brimming with water the color of tea, dizzyingly limpid. Water spiders skated about on its smooth brilliance. He followed its course and after a few steps found the tiny pool of a spring. He knelt down and drank greedily. His thirst quenched, he raised his head and lost his gaze in the transparent depths. Suddenly he noticed his reflection, the face he had not seen for such a long time – this young face turned slightly blue with the shadow of its first beard, the eyebrows bleached by the sun and devastatingly distant, alien eyes.

"It's me" – the words formed slowly in his head – "me, Ivan Demidov…" For a long time he contemplated this somber reflection's features. Then shook himself. It seemed to him that the silence was becoming less dense. Somewhere above him a bird called.

Ivan got up, leaned over again and plunged his flask into the water. "I'll take it to Lagun, he must be baking back there under his gun."

From the citation drawn up on the orders of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union he was to learn that that day they had "contained the enemy's advance in a direction of vital strategic importance" and had "resisted more than ten attacks by a numerically superior enemy." In this text the names of Stalingrad and the Volga would be mentioned, neither of which they had ever seen. And how little these words would reflect what they had lived through and experienced! There would be no mention here of Mikhalych and his gasp of pain, nor of Seryozha in his blackened and reddened battle dress, nor of smoking tanks amid trees stripped bare and drenched in blood.

There would be no mention, either, of the little pool of fresh water in the wood reawakening to all the sounds of summer.