Grigory Baklanov is known primarily for his “military prose.” The officer is a front-line soldier, he created works that occupied a prominent place in Russian literature of the second half of our century. The beginning of his writing career occurred in the post-war period of the most severe ideological terror - the struggle against Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, against the “rootless cosmopolitans.” Baklanov’s first stories - “An Inch of Earth”, “The Dead Have No Shame”, the novel “July 41” caused furious attacks. But the writer withstood the blasphemy, remaining faithful to his dead comrades, “forever nineteen years old” (that was the name of his next story). In the book of memoirs, G. Baklanov not only writes about his life, but rather comprehends the events of the 20th century, which he witnessed and took part in, and also talks about prominent cultural figures - A. Tvardovsky, K. Paustovsky, Yu. Trifonov, V. Lakshin , Yu. Lyubimov, M. Khutsiev.