Tag #113923 - Interview #102857 (Boris Lesman)

I started thinking where I to go after the hospital. Of course, to the front. Later I decided that it would be better to join Lev. By means of field mail he informed me that he was able to take me to his unit. And it meant serving not at the front line, but somewhere in a financial department. By that time I already was a senior lieutenant. And my uncle arranged a request from the front line, from his unit ‘… to detach the senior lieutenant Lesman to our unit.’ But at that time I got to know by chance that according to Stalin’s order, all man-of-war's men had to return to fleet. All of us were in infantry: they threw us to Stalingrad on feet, because the course of war events was extremely hard. I addressed the hospital command, and they answered ‘We have no right to send you to the School: we do not know such order of comrade Stalin.’ – ‘But I have official information that they return seamen!’ – ‘Certainly we can send you to the front line. Otherwise you have to recall your assignment.’ And I wrote my uncle (nervously and urgently) ‘Lev, I have an opportunity to get back to the Navy School, please recall your request.’
 
And they sent a telegram from the front line ‘We do not object to sending Lesman to the Navy School.’ That was the way I got back to the School and finished the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th course and became a seaman. So Lev made a good act, a very good act for me: my uncle turned to be very fine to me! We were 5 on the course, who returned from the front according to the Stalin’s order; in total 22 cadets from 300 were back at School. I returned to School, which was in evacuation in Baku, at the end of April 1944. On 4th July 1944 the School got back to Leningrad, because the siege had been already raised. Destructions were not great, but people changed a lot, naturally: they starved 900 days during the siege. Leningrad looked not very attractively, but it was already clean: its citizens already introduced order in it.